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The chief executive of credit card giant Visa remains confident that blockchain-powered solutions can be integrated into its services and offerings to power the next generation of payments.
Speaking by phone at Visa’s annual shareholder meeting on Jan. 24, outgoing CEO Al Kelly – who will formally step down on Feb. 1 – briefly shared the company’s plans for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and private stablecoin.
According to a Jan. 24 report from the San Francisco Business Times, Kelly said:
“It is still very early days, but we continue to believe that stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies have the potential to play a meaningful role in the payments space, and we have a number of initiatives underway.”
“We have an immaterial amount of investment in crypto funds and companies as we seek to invest in the payments ecosystem,” explained the outgoing CEO.
Kelly also confirmed that Visa’s balance sheet was unaffected by several “high-profile failures” that rocked the cryptocurrency world in 2022:
“We did not suffer any credit losses related to this failure […] In everything we do, please know that we are very focused on maintaining the integrity of the Visa payment system and the payment system as a whole and of course, our brand reputation stands for trust.”
Over the years, Visa has worked on a number of crypto-related initiatives.
His research team started working on a blockchain interoperability project in September 2021, named the Universal Payment Channel (UPC) initiative, this project is designed to build a “network network” for CBDCs and private stablecoins to cross multiple payment channels.
However, Visa has not provided an update on the UPC in over 12 months.
Recently, the payment giant announced on December 20, 2022, that it is working on plans to enable automatic bill payments from users’ Ethereum powered wallets.
Visa has also launched several “no-fee” cryptocurrency debit cards lately including a now-discontinued agreement with FTX and a partnership with Blockchain.com on October 26, 2022, which is still in effect.
While Visa’s 2022 annual report only includes data through September 30—about five weeks before FTX collapses—more information could be disclosed in Visa’s Q1 2023 earnings call on January 26.
Related: Bitcoin Lightning Network vs Visa and Mastercard: How do they stack up?
Visa President Ryan McInerney will formally replace Al Kelly as CEO on February 1, while Kelly will remain as executive chairman.
McInerney appears to be just as, if not more bullish on blockchain-powered payment solutions as well.
In an interview with Fortune in November 2022, McInerney said Visa still had “$14 trillion of digitally viable consumer spend cash out there” and they were continuing to explore where crypto payments could be better leveraged.
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