Visa has announced the launch of Crypto advisory and consulting services to its clients. This move chiefly aims to help clients of the global payments company begin to make the shift from card payments to blockchain technology.
Visa’s Institutional clients, firms, and retail clients will all have access to the crypto consulting and advisory services which will encompass everything from NFTs, Stablecoins, CBDCs, best crypto wallets, and everything in between.
In the year spanning 1st October 2020 to 31st September 2021, Visa has processed $3.5 Billion worth of cryptocurrency transactions, through their cards connected to crypto exchanges and accounts. The globe’s largest payments processor already has hundreds of employees working on crypto-currency-related projects within the company.
The head of crypto at Visa Cuy Sheffield says;
‘We think there’s deep consumer demand for the space and that every financial institution should have a crypto strategy, which is why we have set up this advisory services team.’
In a move that appears to pre-empt institutional investors into crypto, Visa announced their intention to hasten the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. It is fast emerging to Visa and other institutional players that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is just not a sector that they can afford to disregard anymore.
Already, Visa is involved with helping companies like Coinbase, FTX, BlockFi, and Crypto.com issue their own crypto-enabled cards for their crypto-oriented customers to use. They are well aware of the demand that exists for the services, as the rate of mass adoption dictates that the cryptocurrency industry will only grow from here.
Visa is very much part of the centralized traditional banking system, which cryptocurrencies are looking to decentralize. They hold no cryptocurrency in their balance sheet, at least not yet.
This is what they had to say about holding any cryptocurrencies in their books;
“We don’t hold cryptocurrencies on our balance sheet today. We hold currencies on our balance sheet that we need to run our business. We hold currencies that we get paid in or we pay people in. That tends to be the dollar, euro, pound. So we don’t have plans to hold cryptocurrency because it’s not typically the way we get paid or the way we pay people,’
Already, the payments processor is under pressure from some of its clients to lower its processing fees in a world where cryptocurrencies charge close to nothing for their transactions. Open banking is yet another paradigm of the new financial order that threatens the very foundations of Visa’s and TradFi’s core business model.
Sheffield further adds that the company has seen a compounding growth in volume for the number of inquiries coming in from a large number of already existing crypto-curious customers which include fintech companies, financial infrastructure providers, large banks, and financial institutions, merchants, credit corporations, etc.
