Visa crypto-card holders spent more than $1 billion in H1 2021

In the first half of 2021, the volume of transactions on Visa’s debit crypto cards exceeded $1 billion. The payments network disclosed this in its blog.

According to the release, the company currently works with 50 leading cryptocurrency platforms under its card programs, including FTX and Coinbase. Customers of these platforms can convert and spend digital assets at any of Visa’s 70 million merchant locations.

“Merchants don’t have to change anything. For them, it’s the same transaction as any other. The service instantly converts cryptocurrency to fiat,” said Kai Sheffield, Senior Director and Head of Visa’s Crypto, in an interview with Business Insider.

Sheffield noted that the company is simultaneously engaging with a “growing number” of digital-asset holders and “millions” of merchants who do not understand cryptocurrencies and do not wish to engage with them.

“They don\’t want to upgrade the point-of-sale terminals, nor to deal with what blockchain is,” he added.

In an interview with CNBC, Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu said the company is working on building an ecosystem that would make cryptocurrency easier to use and more fiat-like in this respect.

“In our network, we are seeing a large volume of purchases of cryptocurrency on regulated exchanges, and, as far as we can tell, this trend persists,” he said.

According to a recent Mastercard study — Visa’s competitor — 40% of users of the payments system plan to use digital currencies.

Prabhu also stressed that in the near term Visa does not plan to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as Tesla and MicroStrategy did, and other public companies.

“We do not hold cryptocurrencies on our balance sheet. We hold currencies we need to run the business. We hold currencies in which we receive salaries or pay people. Typically, these are the dollar, euro and pound sterling,” he explained.

In June, Visa announced the acquisition of the Swedish fintech startup Tink, the eponymous open-banking platform. The deal was valued at US$2.15 billion.

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