Visa Partners With 60 Crypto Platforms to Let Consumers Spend Digital Currency at 80 Million Merchants

Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto, spoke about the payments giant’s efforts to digitally asset in a Monday interview with NDTV.

He began, “At Visa the scale and extent of our work on crypto has increased dramatically,” he said. “The number of cross-functional people at Visa who are working in crypto in some capacity now exceeds the handful of employees. We’ve also more than doubled the number of partnerships we have with crypto platforms over the past 18 months, reaching 60 partnerships today. Sheffield explained:

We have partnered with over 60 top crypto platforms like FTX and Blockfi to create card programs that allow consumers to convert and use digital currency at more than 80 million merchant locations around the world.

“Crypto-linked card make it simple for consumers to convert or spend digital currencies without the need to ask coffee shops, dry cleaners or grocery stores to accept crypto at the check out,” he said. All conversions from crypto currency to fiat are done behind the scenes. It’s as simple as a Visa transaction, in-store or online.

When asked by the executive if Visa plans to launch a cryptocurrency consulting service in India, he replied that he did. The company has announced that its crypto advisory services will be launched in December.

“Visa’s goal is to offer our crypto advisory services worldwide to clients wherever there’s interest and at the moment, we offer services only in markets that permit such transactions,” he said.

The head of crypto at Visa stated:

We want to be a bridge between the crypto ecosystem and our global network of more than 80 million merchant locations, plus over 15,000 financial institutions.

He concluded that “We’ve created a lot of momentum within this space, and will continue to support crypto ecosystem in many ways,”

Bitcoin faces only one ‘legitimate risk,’ MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor says

Bitcoin ( USD) has fallen more than 20% since its record high. It is now set for its fourth consecutive weekly decline. As always, crypto bulls are holding firm to their faith. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor added bitcoin to the company’s balance sheets last year. He has been a vocal advocate for bitcoin since then. He doesn’t see any – at least not right now. – Long-term barriers to price increases.

He stated in an interview that the only real risk to his company was a black Swan – an unknown unknown. He dismissed potential problems like: “Has it ever been hacked?” It hasn’t been hacked. Is it going be banned? It’s not going away. It can be copied. It was copied ten thousand times. Each copy failed.

Saylor stated that bitcoin can rise forever. This sentiment he reiterated to Yahoo Finance Live. He said that technology adoption and inflation are the two main drivers.

“It’s going be driven by technology. As it gets built into Facebook, Google, and Apple, it’s also built into Square, and PayPal. He said that if you add technical utility, it will drive greater adoption.

He acknowledged recent volatility and future potential volatility. “It’s probably not going to go up uniformly in an exponential curve. But I don’t believe we’ll see technology slow down. I don’t think I’m going to see a world in which currencies don’t keep inflation.

Some crypto analysts have recognized risks. In the short-term, selling in a high-leveraged asset such as bitcoin could cascade if it falls below certain thresholds. Indebted holders will be forced to liquidate. There is some debate about whether bitcoin is an inflation hedge. The recent sell-off seems to have been caused by the possibility of higher interest rates, which is a response to rising inflation.

Still, Saylor’s bitcoin positioning has been largely a good thing. MicroStrategy shares rose 380% in the three years since Saylor first announced that in August 2020, the company would be converting cash from its corporate Treasury to bitcoin. The company has steadily built its position over the years, with purchases made using debt. Saylor announced the latest purchase via tweet earlier in this week.

MicroStrategy purchased 1,434 additional bitcoins at a price of $57.477 per #bitcoin. We #hodl had purchased 122,478 Bitcoins for $3.66 Billion at an average price $29.861 per bitcoin as of 12/9/21. $MSTRhttps://t.co/Xke8QhoYpy

– Michael Saylor (@saylor). December 9, 2021

MicroStrategy is still an enterprise software company but it has become what Saylor refers to as a digital property business. Both are complementary, he said.

“As an operating company we can generate cash flow and sweep that cash into bitcoin. He said that cash flows can be funded at a low cost of capital and that is another benefit. “Our employees are happier, customers are happier and our brand has increased one hundredfold since we adopted the Bitcoin strategy.”