The CEO of credit card giant Visa believes blockchain-powered solutions can be integrated into the company’s services and products to power the next generation of payments.
speak above phone At Visa’s annual shareholder meeting on Jan. 24, outgoing Chief Executive Officer Al Kelly (who will formally step down as CEO on Feb. 1) announced that he would be promoting central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private I briefly shared the company’s plans for stablecoins.
According to January 24th report Kelly of the San Francisco Business Times said:
“Although it is still early days, we continue to believe that stablecoins and central bank digital currencies can play an important role in the payments space, and there are many initiatives underway.”
“As we aim to invest in the payments ecosystem, our investments in crypto funds and companies are small,” explained the outgoing CEO.
Kelly also confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet was unaffected by some of the “high-profile failures” that rocked the cryptocurrency industry in 2022.
“There were no credit losses associated with these failures. […] Please know that in everything we do, we place a strong focus on maintaining the integrity of Visa’s payment system and the payment system as a whole.
Over the years, Visa has worked on many cryptocurrency-related initiatives.
the research team Started working on a blockchain interoperability project Dubbed the Universal Payment Channel (UPC) initiative in September 2021, the project was designed to establish a “network of networks” for CBDCs and private stablecoins to traverse various payment channels. .
However, Visa has not provided an update on the UPC for over 12 months.
Most recently, the payments giant announced on December 20, 2022, make a plan Allow automated invoices to be paid from your users’ Ethereum-powered wallets.
Visa has also recently rolled out several “zero fee” cryptocurrency debit cards. currently terminated contract FTX and Partnership with Blockchain.com October 26, 2022, this is still valid.
Visa’s 2022 Annual report Only data up to September 30th, about five weeks before FTX collapsed, was included. More details may be revealed in Visa’s first quarter 2023 earnings. phone January 26th.
Related: Bitcoin Lightning Network vs. Visa and Mastercard: How Do They Stack Up?
Visa President Ryan McInerney will formally succeed Al Kelly as CEO effective February 1, and Kelly will remain on the Board as Executive Chairman.
McInerney looks similarly, if not more bullish, about blockchain-powered payment solutions.
so interview At Fortune in November 2022, McInerney said Visa still has “$14 trillion of cash in use by consumers that can be digitized” and where cryptocurrency payments could be most leveraged. He said he was still looking for
