Stablecoins and CBDCs Might Play ‘Significant Role’ In Payments — Visa CEO

Visa began working on a blockchain interoperability project in September 2021 to help CBDC and Stablecoin Adoption however couple of updates have been made since.

The Chief Executive of Mastercard Giant Visa stays confident that blockchain-fueled solutions can be integrated into its services and offerings to drive the up and coming generation of payments.

Talking on a call at Visa’s annual stockholder meeting on Jan. 24, active CEO Al Kelly — who will officially step down on Feb. 1 — momentarily shared the firm’s plans for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private Stablecoins.

According to a Jan. 24 report from San Francisco Business Times, Kelly said:

“It’s initial days, yet we continue to accept that Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies can possibly play a significant role in the payments space, and we have various initiatives in progress.”
“We’ve had an immaterial amount of investments in Crypto funds and companies as we look to invest in the payments ecosystem,” the active CEO explained.

Kelly also confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet hasn’t been affected by some of the “high-profile failures” that rocked the cryptocurrency space in 2022:

There have been no credit losses related to these failures.We are very focused on keeping up with the respectability of Visa’s payment system and the payment system in totality,the reputation of our image representing trust.”

Throughout the long term, Visa has worked on various Crypto-related initiatives.

Its research team began working on a blockchain interoperability project in September 2021 named the General Payment Channel (UPC) initiative. The project was intended to lay out a “network of networks” for CBDCs and private Stablecoins to pass through different payment channels.

Visa hasn’t given an update on the UPC in north of a year, however.

All the more recently, the payment giant reported on Dec. 20 that it was chalking up an arrangement to allow automated bills to be paid out from a user’s Ethereum-controlled wallet.

Visa has also carried out several “zero fee” cryptocurrency check cards of late including a now-terminated concurrence with FTX and a partnership with Blockchain.com on Oct. 26, which is still in effect.

While Visa’s 2022 annual report just included data up until Sept. 30 — around five weeks before FTX collapsed — more information might be revealed in Visa’s Q1 2023 earnings call on Jan. 26.
Visa President Ryan McInerney will officially supplant Al Kelly as CEO on Feb. 1, while Kelly will stay on board as executive director.

McInerney appears to be similarly, if not more bullish on blockchain-fueled payment solutions too.

In a meeting with Fortune in November, McInerney said Visa actually has “$14 trillion of cash out there being spent by consumers that can be digitized” and that they’re continuing to investigate where crypto payments might be best leveraged.