Visa Executive Says Payments Giant Not Backing Away From Crypto, Despite Recent Reports

The head of Visa’s crypto department is denying reports that the US payment giant is pausing its digital currency efforts.

Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, tells his Twitter followers that the recent uncertainty in the crypto sector is not prompting the company to step away from digital currencies, as was reported earlier this week.

Sheffield calls the reports “inaccurate” and explains Visa’s current crypto efforts.

“We continue to partner with crypto companies to improve fiat on and off ramps as well as progress on our product roadmap to build new products that can facilitate stablecoin payments in a secure, compliant, and convenient way.

Despite the challenges and uncertainty in the crypto ecosystem, our view has not changed that fiat-backed digital currencies running on public blockchains have the potential to play an important role in the payments ecosystem.

This is the time to build! Anyone building at the intersection of crypto and payments please reach out. We’d love to work with you!”

Reuters reported that both Visa and Mastercard were pausing plans to partner with crypto firms due to the price collapse of the crypto markets and the bankruptcies of FTX and BlockFI. Reuters cited unnamed sources for its report.

Visa has already taken a series of steps to enter the crypto sector.

In October, Visa filed trademark applications to create a digital assets exchange, a crypto wallet, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and virtual environments where users can interact.

The company did partner with FTX to offer crypto debit cards to customers in over 40 countries with a focus on Europe, Latin America and Asia, but that deal was scrapped when the exchange went bankrupt.

Generated Image: DALLE-2