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,”