Visa said today that it will offer consulting services to clients looking to enter into the complex world of cryptocurrencies. The payments giant says that it wants to help further adoption of crypto into the mainstream.
Visa has announced today that it will set up a crypto advisory within its consulting and analytics division. It will offer advisory services to financial institutions and other clients on all things crypto related.
According to an article on CNBC, the American bank UMB is already a client that is using the crypto advisory service.
Visa’s outlook for crypto adoption is incredibly bullish. Nikola Plekas, the crypto lead for Visa, says that his company is providing the capacity for users to spend crypto at more than 80 million merchants worldwide.
With $3.5 billion in digital currency transactions over the last year, by way of the Visa crypto-linked card schemes, the payments processing behemoth has certainly gone all into the emerging crypto industry.
However, it is definitely not picking a winner, and is working on building out services oriented towards stablecoins (the focus and target for imminent regulation by the SEC), as well as for central bank digital currencies, which most analysts see as having potential to be polar opposites in a future monetary system.
Both Visa and its main rival Mastercard see crypto as a huge growth potential, and they are looking into offering services in other areas outside of their main card payments businesses.
However, they will not have it all their own way. They are being disrupted by such developments as open banking. Also, as well as facing more competition from smaller entrants into the payment networks sector, Visa is taking some flak from Amazon, as the e-commerce giant recently announced that it would cease accepting UK credit card payments, given the high fees that were being levied.
Nonetheless, Visa’s crypto lead Plecas affirmed that:
“Crypto for us is a huge new vertical and growth opportunity. And we will be continuing to focus on growing this business moving forward,”
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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