The CEO of Visa has revealed the company’s plans to roll out Bitcoin payments as well as the ability to buy the cryptocurrency using Visa credentials.
“We’re trying to do two things. One is to enable the purchase of Bitcoin on Visa credentials,” Visa CEO, Alfred Kelly, said on the Leadership Next podcast.
“And secondly, working with Bitcoin wallets to allow the Bitcoin to be translated into a fiat currency and therefore immediately be able to be used at any of the 70 million places around the world where Visa is accepted.”
And it might not stop at Bitcoin. According to Kelly, Visa is in talks with around 35 other fiat-backed cryptocurrencies.
“We see a strong potential for those to become a new payment vehicle,” Kelly said.
“We continue to think of Visa as a network of networks… Blockchain networks and stablecoins, like USDC, are just additional networks. So we think that there’s a significant value that Visa can provide to our clients, enabling them to access them and enabling them to spend at our merchants.”
It’s unclear when Bitcoin may come to Visa but considering increasingly more payment platforms are looking to integrate Bitcoin, it certainly seems like it’s the future.
Back in February Mastercard revealed similar plans to Visa.
And in October 2o20 PayPal announced that users would be able to buy and sell crypto on its platform sometime in 2021.