Stablecoins and CBDCs might play 'meaningful role' in payments — Visa CEO
The chief executive of credit card giant Visa remains confident that blockchain-powered solutions can be integrated into its services and offerings to power the next generation of payments.
Speaking on a call at Visa’s annual stockholder meeting on Jan. 24, outgoing CEO Al Kelly — who will officially step down on Feb. 1 — briefly shared the firm’s plans for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins.
According to a Jan. 24 report from San Francisco Business Times, Kelly said:
“We’ve had an immaterial amount of investments in crypto funds and companies as we seek to invest in the payments ecosystem,” the outgoing CEO explained.
Kelly also confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet hasn’t been impacted by some of the “high-profile failures” that rocked the cryptocurrency space in 2022:
Over the years, Visa has worked on a number of crypto-related initiatives.
Its research team began working on a blockchain interoperability project in September 2021, named the Universal Payment Channel (UPC) initiative, the project was designed to establish a “network of networks” for CBDCs and private stablecoins to pass through various payment channels.
Visa hasn’t provided an update on the UPC in over 12 months, however.
More recently, the payment giant announced on Dec. 20, 2022, that it was chalking up a plan to allow automated bills to be paid out from a user’s Ethereum-powered wallet.
Visa has also rolled out several “zero fee” cryptocurrency debit cards of late including a now-terminated agreement with FTX and a partnership with Blockchain.com on Oct. 26, 2022, which is still in effect.
While Visa’s 2022 annual report only included data up until Sept. 30 — about five weeks before FTX collapsed — more information may be revealed
Read more on cointelegraph.com
