Visa Partners With 60 Crypto Platforms to Let Consumers Spend Digital Currency at 80 Million Merchants

Visa’s head of crypto has revealed that the payments giant has partnered with about 60 leading crypto platforms “to launch card programs that make it easy for consumers to convert and spend digital currency at 80 million merchant locations worldwide.” He emphasized, “We’ve built a lot of momentum in this space, and we’ll continue to support the crypto ecosystem in several ways.”

Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, talked about the payments giant’s digital asset efforts in an interview with NDTV, published Monday.

“At Visa, the scale and scope of our work in crypto has grown dramatically,” he began. “The number of people cross-functionally at Visa working on crypto in some capacity is now in the hundreds — up from just a handful of employees. And we’ve more than doubled our number of partnerships with crypto platforms in the last 18 months — up to 60 partnerships today.” Sheffield elaborated:

We’ve partnered with more than 60 of the leading crypto platforms, like FTX, Blockfi, Crypto.com, Coinbase, and Binance, to launch card programs that make it easy for consumers to convert and spend digital currency at 80 million merchant locations worldwide.

“Crypto-linked cards make it easy for consumers to convert and spend digital currencies, without requiring coffee shops, dry cleaners, or grocery stores to directly accept crypto at the checkout,” he continued. “All the conversions from crypto to fiat happen instantly, behind the scenes. In-store, online, it’s as easy as a standard Visa transaction.”



The executive was asked whether Visa is planning to launch a crypto consulting service in India. The company announced the launch of its crypto advisory services in early December.

“Visa aims to provide our crypto advisory services to clients globally wherever there is interest, and currently, we offer services in markets where the regulations permit such transactions,” he replied.

The Visa head of crypto opined:

At the end of the day, we want to serve as a bridge connecting the crypto ecosystem with our global network of 80 million merchant locations and more than 15,000 financial institutions.

“We’ve built a lot of momentum in this space, and we’ll continue to support the crypto ecosystem in several ways,” he concluded.

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