Visa CEO Unveils Payment Giant’s Crypto Strategy in Earnings Call

The chairman and CEO of financial services firm Visa, Alfred Kelly, is revealing the company’s crypto game plan going forward.

In an earnings call, Kelly addresses what he sees as a growing interest in digital assets and outlines the company’s outlook on the sector and how it plans to participate in the growing trend.

Kelly says that the payments giant plans to let Visa users buy and sell cryptocurrencies that are viewed as “digital gold” and “predominantly held as assets” such as Bitcoin.

“Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally.”

The Visa CEO adds that the payments giant views digital currencies operating on public blockchains in the same light as traditional banking networks such as the Real-Time Payments (RTP) and the Automated Clearing House (ACH) systems.

“We think of digital currencies running on public blockchains as additional networks just like RTP or ACH networks, so we see them as part of our network of networks strategy. Across both of these segments, we are the clear leader in this space.”

The Visa executive adds that the payments firm would be open to adding other crypto assets. Kelly also discloses that the company has already forged partnerships with dozens of crypto firms and exchanges.

“…To the extent a specific digital currency becomes a recognized means of exchange, there’s no reason why we cannot add it to our network, which already supports over 160 currencies today…

Today, 35 of the leading digital currency platforms and wallets have already chosen to issue Visa, including coin-based Crypto.com, BlackFi, Fold and BitPanda. These wallet relationships represent the potential for more than 50 million Visa credentials. The next leading network has a fraction of that.”