Cuy Sheffield, head of cryptocurrency at payment giant Visa, recently shared the company’s vision for digital assets. He revealed that Visa is testing how to accept settlement payments from USDC issuers on Ethereum, with the ultimate goal of allowing customers to convert digital assets into legal tender on its platform.
Cuy Sheffield mentioned in a fireside chat at the “StarkWare Sessions 2023” conference a few days ago that one of the areas that Visa is paying close attention to is the use of digital assets and legal tender for global settlement. He said:
This is one of the areas where we want to build muscle memory. Just like we can exchange dollars and euros in cross-border transactions, we should also be able to convert between digitally tokenized dollars and traditional dollars.
Cuy Sheffield pointed out that Visa currently still relies on SWIFT for settlements, but because of the many limitations in these networks, the payment giant has not been able to transfer funds as frequently as expected.
He continued that against this background, Visa has been exploring how to incorporate blockchain technology into its existing network, and has also started testing for this, trying to transfer funds faster by actually accepting settlement payments through stablecoins.
Speaking at Visa’s annual shareholder meeting recently, former CEO Al Kelly briefly shared the company’s plans for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and stablecoins, claiming that “stablecoins and central bank digital currencies have the potential To play an important role, we are implementing several initiatives.”
As early as 2021, Visa has cooperated with cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com and cryptocurrency custodian Anchorage to establish an experimental project , completing the first transaction of sending USDC from Crypto.com to Anchorage Ethereum address, directly in Ethereum The settlement of USDC transactions on the Fang block chain can be regarded as a major breakthrough in the integration of digital payment and cryptocurrency.
