Visa, the global payment network and credit card giant has announced plans to integrate with USDC, a leading stablecoin that was originally built on Ethereum but now also exists on other layer-ones like Algorand or Solana. In the announcement, it’s made clear that Visa won’t actually custody the ERC-20 USDC token instead, Visa plans to have select card issuers start integrating USDC software into their platforms which will ultimately enable users to send/receive USDC payments.
source:https://t.co/GCFJ48cycc
— Ryan Sean Adams – rsa.eth 🏴 (@RyanSAdams) December 2, 2020
As part of this new integration, Circle the company behind USDC will also join Visa’s FinTech FastTrack program. Once Circle is able to get sufficient USDC adoption with the various issuers and graduates from the Fast Track program, Visa will look to issue credit cards that enable businesses to send/receive USDC using only the card. If all goes smoothly, this could significantly increase the utility of USDC in corporate business settings.
This is the biggest of Visa’s crypto-related announcements as of late, the company seems to be helping to push crypto payment adoption forward and has onboarded various other crypto-native companies to the Fast Track program including Fold and Cred. Looking back to early 2020 and 2019, Visa also granted Coinbase the right to issue cards and even made a sizable Series B investment in digital asset custodian, Anchorage.
It’s interesting to note that back in 2019, Visa was still a part of the Facebook-founded Libra Association’s consortium of companies but by October of that year, Visa had left the Libra organization and Circle decided to sell off its other business lines ( Poloniex, Circle Invest, and Circle Pay) to focus strictly on USDC.
This is big news not only for USDC and Circle but really for the entire crypto market. Stablecoins were arguably the first DeFi primitive on Ethereum and now with Visa pushing for the adoption of stablecoins, it could lead to further growth of the entire ecosystem. For those unfamiliar with crypto, interacting with USDC stablecoins through Visa’s network could be the perfect introduction to the digital asset space.
Keep up with Circle & USDC by following the Circle Twitter page.
Business Development and Operations at TrustToken – TUSD. Jack is a startup generalist and DeFi enthusiast. Stay connected with him by following @HHJackSun on Twitter.