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Visa Partners With 60 Crypto Platforms to Let Consumers Spend Digital Currency at 80 Million Merchants
https://news.bitcoin.com/visa-partners-with-60-crypto-platforms-let-consumers-spend-digital-currency-80-million-merchants/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/visa-partners-with-60-crypto-platforms-let-consumers-spend-digital-currency-80-million-merchants/)
https://www.ndtv.com/business/we-will-continue-to-support-crypto-ecosystem-says-visas-cuy-sheffield-2660617 (https://www.ndtv.com/business/we-will-continue-to-support-crypto-ecosystem-says-visas-cuy-sheffield-2660617)

Visa’s head of crypto has revealed that the payments giant has partnered with about 60 leading crypto platforms “to launch card programs that make it easy for consumers to convert and spend digital currency at 80 million merchant locations worldwide.” He emphasized, “We’ve built a lot of momentum in this space, and we’ll continue to support the crypto ecosystem in several ways.”

Visa Committed to Growing Crypto Ecosystem
Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, talked about the payments giant’s digital asset efforts in an interview with NDTV, published Monday.

“At Visa, the scale and scope of our work in crypto has grown dramatically,” he began. “The number of people cross-functionally at Visa working on crypto in some capacity is now in the hundreds — up from just a handful of employees. And we’ve more than doubled our number of partnerships with crypto platforms in the last 18 months — up to 60 partnerships today.” Sheffield elaborated:

“We’ve partnered with more than 60 of the leading crypto platforms, like FTX, Blockfi, Crypto.com, Coinbase, and Binance, to launch card programs that make it easy for consumers to convert and spend digital currency at 80 million merchant locations worldwide.”

Of course, this is generally a positive development. This may well be one step forward. But this is hardly the goal. Very far from it. This is still fiat playing the game. In this scenario, people are still actually paying in fiat and merchants are still receiving fiat. Merchants don't even have to accept crypto as a legit currency. There's still almost no crypto in this setup. But, well, at least crypto owners have the illusion that they are making use of their crypto funds.

It is a summary of what they have done recently, which is a positive thing, but it does not mean that Visa has an official orientation regarding cryptocurrencies. For example, the real change will be:

 - Provide an option for users to pay with Bitcoin/Altcoins using all Visa cards.
 - Providing the possibility of opening a crypto account for all stores, where it is possible to deposit, withdraw or transfer it into fiat.
 - Opening a direct payment of small amounts without the need to verify identity (the buyer's party) for all websites that accept Visa card.
 - The possibility of Visa to withdraw cryptocurrencies with the role of providing the network and guaranteeing transactions.

All of these changes will express the company's policy towards Bitcoin and not, as is currently happening, "the expansion of crypto-related services."

We saw this coming. Very good news that has come before the end of the year. I think the effect of this positive news will be seen in Q1 of 2022.

Knowing how big Visa is and what they are capable of and the connections that they've got. This is really something that we're waiting for. Before, we're talking about big companies adopting and allowing people to pay in crypto. So, regardless of the integration of their service and conversion into fiat for payments being done, there's still the use case of crypto that's being spent for purchases.

Definitely, this is good news for the cryptocurrency community, visa taking advantage of cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency getting adaption. This is a win-win situation. But for me this can't bring many benefits, I have some addiction to using a cryptocurrency visa or master card. I have tried on multiple platforms to get that. But due to country restrictions, I failed to do so. However, these restrictions would end once a time and I can get benefits as well. I always love to see Bitcoin adaption and make it easier to use Bitcoin for the public. So general citizens will be more interested in crypto.

Such great news to us crypto enthusiasts, I smell another bull market and possibly could reach another ATH.

Based on Statisca.com (https://www.statista.com/statistics/624320/number-of-visa-debit-cards-globally-usa/),

1.7 Billion users on debit cards using Visa will potentially have an awareness of crypto and even 30% of it will invest in crypto will surely have a huge impact.  But this isn't about Bitcoin alone, it included all altcoins.

of course, they will include altcoins, Cryptocurrency now is more about options on what Cryptocurrency to use, this is a huge step to adoption and it will eventually come because everybody is going Cryptocurrency now, Visa just doesn't want to be left behind on the latest technology, what they were ignoring in the past, now they are embracing, it's using now billions of users will be aware of Cryptocurrency.

As much as this sounds like a great development I think ViSA is not the easiest option we have when it comes to spending or buying cryptocurrencies using it because this brings in KYC which is really something most of us feel uncomfortable to share because we do not know were our data might end up after passing all KYC requirements. If only an MOU of some sort can be worked out to bypass all this to enable easier ways of buying crypto.

This sounds like good news, but I still can't understand why I don't have a bitcoin card that arrives in my country? what kind of bureaucracy do I need to have this option when in my country it is allowed to use bitcoin? these visa and mastercard guys have just been hanging around for years and they don't put options for people from africa, it's unfair that they only serve in europe and america and some countries in asia and exclude africa

Sadly it is going to take a lot to change that. It's just a question of numbers and money. The larger countries have more of both so they get the love and attention so to speak.
You can even see it in smaller countries throughout the world. The bigger ones with more money get more attention from banks & other financial institutions.
Obviously the ones that support funky things like Panama and The Cayman Islands are exceptions to this, but for the most part money talks....

-Dave

Indeed. Money talks.

I guess that in order to have those cards working, in most cases some startups/financial companies need to be made "there", because current small (bitcoin card) companies just don't know what papers they may need in the other side of the world so they have everything OK and legal so Visa/Matercard will have nothing to complain. And since they don't expect big revenue for the effort to find that out, they just don't bother.
From what I know, for now most of the crypto cards are issued by financial companies on behalf / for crypto related companies. Quite a number of "hands" for such a "small job".

Maybe after this new partnerships it will be easier also for African companies get to issue crypto cards. It would be shame not to.

Well, it's not the illusion, as they are indeed using their crypto. I think its the other way around: the other side is  fooling themselves, thinking that they accept crypto if they are using some 3rd party payment processor instead accepting crypto directly, peer to peer. Then again, I completely understand businesses being reluctant to accept crypto directly as they still have to pay their suppliers in fiat, meaning they have to deal with conversions. And then you have to add volatility factor, which is not negligent when you have bunch of financial obligations each month.

This change won't come overnight, and ~10 years is basically overnight when we are talking about disrupting current system.



Another factor are regulations, which developed countries in western Europe and NA don't lack of, and that's what these card issuers (and exchange) like to see when deciding where to expand.