Visa vice president made a striking statement during a panel held in Dubai. According to the executive, the integration of traditional payment systems with centralized cryptocurrency exchanges plays a crucial role in the adoption of crypto assets by users. Visa has initiated a roadmap for crypto products and plans to create a fund to support innovative solutions focused on payment and trade services.
Visa Bridges the Gap
Akshay Chopra, Vice President and Head of Innovation and Design at Visa, who participated as a speaker at the Blockchain Economy Dubai Summit panel, emphasized the role of Visa cards in bridging the gap between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies in recent years.
Chopra also noted that this interaction could create various opportunities for the spread of traditional financial institutions to broader ecosystems like Web3. Payment settlement between financial institutions is evolving towards a different dimension through blockchain-based solutions. Chopra commented on the limitations of existing traditional protocols such as the SWIFT payment system, stating:
“Banks transact trillions of dollars with each other at the end of the day, but there is a downtime for international transactions. This is a major pain point and also expensive and inefficient.”
Akshay highlighted a pilot application using USD Coin with Circle, which enables users of various cryptocurrency exchanges to make payments with USDC at the end of a specific day:
“It’s cheaper than traditional methods, it operates 24/7, and it’s innovative. You send the USDC balance, and Visa holds the funds on the Ethereum blockchain network.”
Legal Regulations Pose Challenges for Financial Institutions
The main reason why financial institutions cannot fully benefit from blockchain technology and crypto-based services is legal regulations. However, Akshay highlighted the legal regulations adopted in countries like the United Arab Emirates and stated that such environments provide more contributions to industry participants than reactive regulations in countries like the United States:
“When they create regulatory frameworks, they invite discussions on what the industry needs and how the future might look like in a few years, so the regulations are developed beyond their time.”
In its announcement released in April 2023, payment giant Visa stated that it has initiated a crypto product roadmap to enable the adoption of payment systems in stablecoins and public blockchain networks by financial institutions. The company also aims to create a $100 million fund through Visa Ventures to explore innovative AI-supported products and solutions focused on payment and trade services.
