Payments giant Visa announced that USD Coin (USDC) is to settle a transaction with Visa over open-source blockchain Ethereum, making it the first major payments network to do so, the company claims in the news release.
Visa is doing the capability with crypto platform Crypto.com and expects to offer the USDC settlement capability to more partners later this year. USDC is a stablecoin backed by the US dollar.
The payments company has been working with digital asset bank Anchorage to enable Visa to launch “a pilot that allows Crypto.com to send USDC to Visa to settle a portion of its obligations for the Crypto.com Visa card program,” the news release read.
Having the ability to settle in USDC can enable crypto native companies like Crypto.com to look at new business models without needing traditional fiat in their treasury and settlement workflows. Additionally, Visa’s treasury upgrades and integration with Anchorage has strengthened the payments company’s ability to directly support new central bank digital currency as it emerges in the future.
“Crypto-native fintechs want partners who understand their business and the complexities of digital currency form factors,” Jack Forestell, Visa’s executive vice president and chief product officer, said in a statement. “The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world.”
Meanwhile, Diogo Mónica, Co-Founder and President of Anchorage said in a statement that Anchorage was built for companies like Visa to build new products in crypto.
“We’ve been with Visa every step of the way since 2019 and are extremely pleased to see these first stablecoin payment rails come to life through Anchorage APIs,” Mónica said in a statement.
In other recent payments news, Fundbox, a financial platform for small businesses, has tapped Cetin Duransoy as chief operating officer. Duransoy joins the company from Visa where he served as its head of global installment products. He oversaw developing Visa’s installment payment ecosystem that helped issuers to offer and sellers to display installment plans to customers.