The company told Reuters it had launched the pilot program
with payment and crypto platform Crypto.com and plans to offer the option to
more partners later this year.
Bitcoin, the most popular crypto coin, jumped to a one-week
high on the news, rising as much as 4.5% to $58,300 and heading back toward a
record-high above $61,000 hit earlier this month.
Visa subsequently confirmed the news in a statement.
The USD Coin (USDC) is a stablecoin cryptocurrency whose
value is pegged directly to the U.S. dollar.
Visa's move comes as finance firms including BNY Mellon ,
BlackRock Inc and Mastercard Inc take steps to make more use of
cryptocurrencies for investment and payment purposes.
Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk, a major proponent of
cryptocurrencies, said last week that customers can buy its electric vehicles
with bitcoin, hoping to encourage more day-to- day use of the digital currency.
"We see increasing demand from consumers across the
world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we're seeing
demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access
for consumers," Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said.
Traditionally, if a customer chooses to use a Crypto.com
Visa card to pay for a coffee, the digital currency held in a cryptocurrency
wallet needs to be converted into traditional money.
The cryptocurrency wallet will deposit traditional fiat
currency in a bank account, to be wired to Visa at the end of the day to settle
any transactions, adding cost and complexity for businesses.
Visa's latest step, which will use the ethereum blockchain,
strips out the need to convert digital coin into traditional money in order for
the transaction to be settled.
Visa said it has partnered with digital asset bank Anchorage
and completed the first transaction this month — with Crypto.com sending USDC
to Visa's Ethereum address at Anchorage.
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