Avalanche Foundation Reveals Launch of New Visa Spending Card Linked to Self-Custody Wallet

The foundation behind Avalanche (AVAX) is partnering with payments giant Visa for a new crypto spending card product.

In a new announcement, The Avalanche Foundation introduces the Avalanche Card, a new card that allows users to pay with crypto at Visa-accepting locations.

“Introducing the Avalanche Card!

Spend your WAVAX, USDC, sAVAX, and more wherever Visa is accepted.

Enjoy both physical and virtual cards, 24/7 dedicated support, and seamless transactions through popular apps.“

According to the firm, the Visa card, which will be available in physical and digital formats, will support Wrapped AVAX (WAVAX), Circle’s USD-pegged stablecoin USDC, and BENQI Liquid Staked AVAX (sAVAX), among others.

The card will be linked to a unique user wallet address that each user maintains custody over, all while offering Visa customer support and promising security through self-custody.

The card has already hit the ground in Latin America and the Caribbean, with plans to expand currently underway and a waitlist already live.

Last month, the Visa executive in charge of the payments giant’s crypto department said the company is looking at a future where it has several types of blockchain technology under its scope.

Cuy Sheffield referenced the early days of the internet and said that crypto is going through its “broadband moment” of its history where it finds its footing and advances as a technology.

“Blockchains today share some parallels with the early internet — particularly more than their fair share of skeptics, hecklers and critics. It’s hard not to hear echoes of the past’s self-certainty whenever an analyst says something like, ‘blockchains are too slow! Too hard to use! Too expensive!’ or ‘they don’t have any use cases!’

Sure, blockchains have been all of those things, and some use cases are more obvious than others. But the internet was once slow, expensive, and hard to use — and today, it’s fast enough to stream live video from space, cheap enough to be free in a lot of places, and easy enough for a six-year-old to use.

At Visa, we’ve been on the forefront of payments technology for more than six decades. We saw the potential for the internet in its early days and played a major role in helping it scale and support new forms of commerce. Today, we see significant potential for blockchain networks — and many possible futures.”

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