Visa is reportedly seeking to grow its stablecoin settlement capabilities by leveraging USDC through the Solana blockchain. 
The project is being facilitated with the involvement of Worldpay and Nuvei for improved card acceptance.

Recently, it was reported that Visa has expanded its stablecoin settlement capabilities with USDC via the Solana blockchain. In order to test the movement of huge sums of USDC between its partners over the Solana and Ethereum network, Visa added merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuve to its pilot programs.

With stablecoins such as Stellar (XLM) based USDC and blockchains such as Solana and Ethereum, Visa would leverage their speed of cross-border settlement while providing options to users. 

The head of crypto at Visa, Cuy Sheffield commented on this:

Visa is committed to being at the forefront of digital currency and blockchain innovation and leveraging these new technologies to help improve the way we move money.

It is important to note that the effort to use USDC within the Treasury operations of Visa started in 2021. Its pilot program started with Crypto.com. This exchange is known for using USDC for its settlement on the Visa card in Australia. According to Sheffield, using Worldpay and Nuvei in this program improved card acceptance. 

Worldpay and Nuvei enable card acceptance for a diverse set of merchants across the world including a growing number of merchants interacting with the blockchain and crypto economy who may prefer to use USDC within their corporate treasuries over traditional fiat banking.

More on Visa and USDC’s Initiative

The effort to get this initiative launched was much affected by the recent US Securities and Exchange Commission’s crackdowns on crypto exchanges. According to reports, the card company made direct calls to gaming operators, NFT marketplaces, and On-Ramp crypto providers who may be interested in transacting in stablecoin for the accepted card payments. Having Nuvei and Worldpay around, Visa would use its Circle account to facilitate USDC payment to these merchants. 

Worldpay President Jim Johnson spoke about this:

Visa’s USDC settlement capability enables Worldpay to bring more of our treasury operations in-house and allows us to offer merchants more choices for receiving funds. Diversifying funding options and increasing flexibility is critical to serving the changing needs of global merchants in today’s rapidly evolving commerce landscape.

On X (Twitter), the director of marketing at Hedera Hashgraph shared an infographic highlighting what to expect in this initiative. Firstly, there would be a full transparency of up to 100 percent settlement. There would be traceability, auditability, and uniform reporting and reconciliation.

very cool. now…imagine a cc tx first being settled in $USDC while real-time converted into any of a dozen L1/L2 gas tokens for primary/secondary NFT purchases.

The latter stable to crypto piece is very straightforward. But if you can get us a Visa/MC to stable turnkey…

— Tom Baiga │PixFi (@BaigaTom) September 14, 2023

The initiative would prioritize speed and efficiency. Hedera which is also involved in the project has more than $250 million in USDC liquidity. USDC on Hedera is said to offer high scalability, low fees, as well as fast settlement. 

Cross-border payment market value is expected to hit as high as $290 trillion in 2030. 

Solana currently has a bullish market sentiment with a trading price of $18.88. In the last 24 hours, the asset has surged by 3.6 percent but has fallen by 2 percent in the last seven days. Hedera (HBAR) is also up by 4.9 percent in the last 24 hours, trading at $0.051616. 

 

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ September 14, 2023 2:10 pm