Visa, a fintech and one of the largest payment processing players, announced the launch of its international cryptocurrency advisory service for its clients, including banks and merchants. The move comes as the acceptance of crypto and digital currencies gains momentum and the subsequent high demand for crypto services. 

Visa’s crypto services offering will be focused on financial institutions that want to retain and attract customers with cryptocurrency offerings. It will also be focused on central banks exploring crypto and retailers that want to delve into NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

More on the launch of crypto services launch 

UMB Bank (a regional US lender) Executive Vice President, Uma Wilson said they reached out to Visa to learn more about cryptocurrencies and stable coins, and the use cases that’ll be relevant for UMB Bank’s retail and commercial businesses. 

At present, Visa uses its network to enable buying, selling, and the custody of digital currency. Additionally, it offers a credit card that allows its users to earn Bitcoin on making purchases and also enables the use of USD Coin, a stable coin crypto, whose value is connected directly to the US dollar, in order to settle transactions on its payment network. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 40.68 lakh (as of 12:30 pm on December 8)

Chief Financial Officer of Visa, Vasant Prabhu said to Reuters “for cryptos, like Bitcoin, to be used as a medium of exchange, price stability is very much needed. 

If crypto prices will fluctuate from $60,000 to $50,000 in a matter of a few hours, it’ll be a very difficult thing for merchants to accept crypto like Bitcoin as a currency,” Prabhu added. “I don’t know if cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will ever be a medium of exchange. Stablecoins will,” he further added, saying that Visa aims at facilitating such transactions when the time is right.

SEE ALSO: Fintech giant Revolut plans on building its own cryptocurrency exchange

About Visa 

Visa is an internationally recognized and celebrated financial technology company and its services include allowing its clients to use the network of the payment processor for their digital offerings, educating financial (and other) institutions about cryptocurrencies, and helping in the management of backend operations.

A world leader in fintech payments, Visa provides reliable and secure payment solutions across the globe via VisaNet, which is capable of handling over 65,000 transactions in one second.

Earlier in December 2021, Visa announced that it has successfully completed the acquisition Currencycloud – an international platform that allows fintech and banks to offer groundbreaking foreign exchange tools and solutions for cross-border payments.

The deal will empower the two companies and their clients as well as partners to provide increased transparency, control, and flexibility for consumers as well as businesses when making cross-border payments and when doing business in multiple currencies.

The cloud-based platform of Currencycloud is already capable of supporting more than 500 banking and technology clients. it also has its reach in more than 180 countries and aims at continuing to serve its customers and partners across the industry.

SEE ALSO: FinTech Brex gains ‘decacorn’ status after raising $300 million

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