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Visa has teamed up with Ethereum scaling firm ConsenSys to help central bank digital currency (CBDC) networks bridge the gap with traditional financial institutions. Visa has created a CBDC Payments Module to serve as an on-ramp for CBDCs to existing payment networks. Banks and issuer processors will be able to plug into the module and integrate their existing infrastructure. Customers will eventually be able to use their CBDC-linked Visa card or digital wallet anywhere that Visa is accepted globally. Visa is currently in the process of integrating the Module with the ConsenSys Codefi CBDC sandbox powered by ConsenSys Quorum.

Visa CEO Al Kelly said his firm is in a position to make crypto-assets more "safe, useful and applicable" and may add them to its payments network. Speaking on the company's fiscal first-quarter 2021 earnings call, Kelly described crypto-assets like bitcoin as "digital gold" which are "not used as a form of payment in a significant way at this point." "Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally."

Three "key values" will now steer Visa's digital currency playbook: maintaining robust data protection standards; remaining network and currency agnostic; and partnering with projects that align with the payments firm's existing expertise. Already a crypto bridge for tens of millions of merchants, Visa cast its digital currency partnerships as critical to preserving what it said was six decades of innovation. The publicly-traded firm cited its business collaborations with crypto exchange Coinbase and investment in the crypto custodian Anchorage. Visa said it is also working directly with policymakers and non-governmental organizations to "help shape the dialogue" around digital currencies, including the evolution of central bank digital currency. https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2020/07/21/advancing-our-approach-1595302085970.html

Visa is connecting its global payments network of 60 million merchants to the U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) developed by Circle Internet Financial on the ethereum blockchain. The digital currency is now valued at $2.9 billion. While Visa itself won't custody the digital currency, effective immediately, the partnership will see Circle working with Visa to help select Visa credit card issuers start integrating the USDC software into their platforms and send and receive USDC payments.

Coinbase has become the first pure-play crypto company to be approved as a Visa principal member. Coinbase launched its Visa debit card in 2019 allows users to spend cryptocurrency as cash anywhere Visa is accepted. It is available in 29 markets with 10 cryptocurrencies supported. As a principal members of Visa Coinbase could issue cards to other crypto companies, though it's not clear if it plans to use that power immediately.

Visa developed a programmable finance platform that allows Brazilian soybean farmers to securely fund and sell their crop harvests on a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain. Partnering with Agrotoken, Microsoft, and Sinqia, Visa was one of nine finalists tasked with exploring innovative blockchain-based use cases for Brazil's real digital central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC) as part of the Banco Central do Brasil's most recent LIFT Challenge. The CBDC's programmability allows delivery and payment of assets and currencies to be automatically settled only when certain conditions are met, for more efficient capital usage and reduced counterparty risks. https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.19706.html

Visa is piloting a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services. The Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients "easily connect into the infrastructure provided by Visa's partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences." Visa is already working with crypto companies to issue bank cards and has partnered with 35 crypto firms to date, but this is the first time the company has offered crypto services to banks.

Facebook is also working with Visa to power the new payments feature on WhatsApp in Brazil. Payments on WhatsApp are made possible by Visa Direct, Visa's real-time push payments technology, and newly launched Visa Cloud Tokenization, that protects and removes sensitive payment information by converting the data to tokens and storing them securely.

Forbes recently spoke with Terry Angelos, SVP global head of fintech at Visa and Cuy Sheffield, senior director, head of crypto at Visa. They revealed that one area that Visa has been spending time on is offline digital currency payments. When central banks think about CBDCs, one of the potential features that they are paying attention to is offline payments. There are a lot of technical challenges around enabling this functionality in a secure manner. So Visa is continuing to advance research on that front and will probably have more to talk about in the coming year.

TransferWise is the first firm to pilot the Visa Cloud Connect platform, which provides a secure cloud-based connection to VisaNet, including a unified certification and testing framework, Visa-hosted security services such as transaction encryption and PIN key management, and simplified settlement in local markets. This will enable TransferWise to expand its debit card program that accompanies its multi-currency account.

Visa has launched a new network to help financial institutions process cross-border payments globally on behalf of corporate clients faster and at a lower operational cost. The Visa B2B Connect network launch covers 30 trade corridors globally and is expected to expand to 90 markets by year-end.

Visa is partnering with Consensys to build a CBDC on-ramp. Visa aims to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox, available in the spring of 2022, where central banks can experiment with distributing the technology after minting on Consensys' Quorum blockchain-based protocol. Central banks would design their CBDC on Consensys' Quorum where they would set its monetary and governance rules. They would then use Visa's infrastructure to distribute the currency via payment service providers.

Tourists visiting the People's Republic of China can now pre-charge their digital yuan wallets using Visa and Mastercard payment options. Inbound tourists are reportedly able to make use of overseas mobile numbers to register and open e-CNY wallets and make use of the recharge wallet feature, which supports Visa and Mastercard payments. They must "top up" with at least 100 yuan (around $14) and if they have any funds left in their wallets when they depart China, they can request a refund, after which funds are automatically transferred back to their credit card accounts. This coincides with the start of the Asian Games. https://cryptonews.com/news/foreign-travelers-can-now-use-chinas-digital-yuan-app.htm

Ethereum-based banking alternative platform Monolith, is issuing a new Visa debit card, which allows users to spend Dai stablecoin anywhere in the world at stores that accept Visa payments.

Visa will allow the use of USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network. USD Coin (USDC) is a USD-pegged stablecoin. Visa has launched the pilot program with payment and crypto platform Crypto.com and plans to offer the option to more partners later this year. It uses the Ethereum blockchain, and strips out the need to convert digital coin into traditional money in order for the transaction to be settled. In the pilot, Crypto.com sent USDC to Visa's Ethereum address at Anchorage.

Visa has called off its deal to buy fintech start-up Plaid for $5.3bn after the US Department of Justice sued to block the transaction on antitrust grounds. Plaid makes software that allows banks and fintechs to plug into consumers' various financial accounts, enabling those companies, with users' permission, to aggregate spending data, look up balances and verify other personal financial information. Visa denied it had been trying to eliminate a potential competitor but said it wanted to avoid "protracted and complex litigation".

Visa is currently partnering with 50 crypto platforms on card programs to allow users to convert and spend digital currency at 70 million merchants worldwide. These programs don't require coffee shops, dry cleaners, or other businesses to directly accept cryptocurrencies at the checkout. The process uses 'tap and go' without the complexity of new acceptance points or cryptographic keys. Visa has been growing their relationships with digital currency platforms like FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and CoinZoom.

MoneyGram is expanding its debit card deposit service internationally via the Visa Direct real-time push payments platform. MoneyGram becomes the first company in the industry to enable cross-border transfers from the United States using Visa Direct. This service is now available to Spain and the Philippines, and soon to additional countries.

Visa published a paper that outlines how to write a smart contract application for a self-custodial wallet that could allow a user to setup a programmable payment instruction that can push funds automatically from one self-custodial wallet account to another at recurring intervals, without requiring the user's active participation each time.  This solution taps into a concept known as "Account Abstraction", a developer proposal currently being explored within the Ethereum ecosystem. The idea behind Account Abstraction is to make user accounts on Ethereum function more like smart contracts by allowing a user to have programmable features embedded into their wallets.

San Francisco-based Fold, an app that offers users bitcoin rewards, has joined Visa's Fintech Fast Track Program and plans to launch a co-branded Visa debit card that gives out as much as 10% of cash purchases with bitcoin instead of traditional reward points like airline miles or cash.