Al Kelly, Visa’s CEO, responded to an analyst’s query about cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and cross-border transactions during the company’s Q2 2021 earnings call yesterday.

“This is a room that we’re leaning into in a big way,” Kelly said, “and I think (we’re) incredibly well-positioned.”

Al Kelly’s comments on five key areas –

“First and foremost, as far as we can tell, there are two business segments. One example is Bitcoin, which is mainly an asset owned by individuals. They aren’t commonly used as a means of payment. They’re what we refer to as “digital gold.” Then there are digital currencies like Central Bank digital currencies and Stablecoins, which are directly backed by existing fiat currencies and are gaining traction as a payment alternative.

They operate on a public blockchain, essentially an additional network, similar to what an RTP or HTH is.”


“So our emphasis is on five different opportunities that we see in this room, and I would say that this is a space that we are leaning heavily into, and I believe that we are extremely well-positioned.”

“The first opportunity is at the heart of what we do, which is allowing customers to buy these currencies or Bitcoin, and we’re working hard with wallets and exchanges to ensure that we’re promoting adoption and people’s ability to buy with their Visa cards. And Vasant mentioned in his remarks that “we saw some development, and some of the volumes came from people using Visa cards to make these purchases.”


“The second opportunity is to enable digital currency cash-outs in fiat currency. We are converting a digital currency to fiat on a Visa credential, which allows those funds accessible for shopping at any of Visa’s 70 million merchants and gives the digital currency immediate usefulness.

And we’re the clear frontrunners in this field. We now have over 35 digital currency sites and wallets collaborating with us. Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlockFi, Fold, and Bitpanda are only a few examples of cryptocurrency exchanges.

As a result, that is unquestionably a second significant opportunity.

“The third step is to allow financial institutions and fintech partners to offer crypto to their customers. So, in this room, we’ve built APIs that allow financial institution customers to buy custody or even trade digital currencies owned by Anchorage. The first federally chartered digital asset bank in the United States. And we’ve done our first launch with First Boulevard, a digital neo bank centred on creating generational wealth for the Black community. So that’s the third opportunity: simply assisting financial institutions and fintech in providing this crypto alternative to their customers.”

“The fourth is a settlement, which you mentioned earlier. We’ve updated our infrastructure so that a financial institution can settle with Visa in a digital currency starting with USDC using Stablecoins. As I’m sure you’re aware, we now transact in 160 currencies every day and settle in 25 currencies every evening. So we’ll be able to endorse digital currency as an additional settlement currency on our network. And on our end, settling in USDC is fairly close to settling in US dollars, but the logistics of obtaining these funds are a little different. And they involve some integration work with a few crypto custodians like Anchorage.”


“The fifth region of opportunity is simply collaborating with central banks. Many countries experiment with central bank digital currency, and I believe it will prove to be very useful in countries where the infrastructure to distribute cash is either inaccessible or restricted. And it is one of the reasons that prevent the 1.7 billion people I mentioned in my remarks from joining the financial mainstream.”


“So we’re talking to Central Banks about the importance of public-private partnerships, especially the importance of acceptance because for these federal bank digital currencies to have value, they’ll have to be both secure in the minds of consumers.

And this is something we’ve done before and could help with, and they’ll also have to have some form of obfuscation. We’ve done something before and could help with it, and they’ll have to have some form of obfuscation.