Visa CEO Comments Underscore Crypto Support And Growing Adoption Momentum

As the ongoing pandemic forces traditional industries to pivot to adapt, cryptocurrencies are enjoying a more significant share of the spotlight than ever before. 

While cryptocurrencies can disrupt the traditional banking industry, resolve the global unbanked issue, and offer users across third-world countries easy access to digital assets, mainstream adoption is still limited given the costliness and barriers to transacting through local exchanges. 

Visa, the American multinational financial services corporation, is spearheading some of the corporate efforts to make crypto more accessible for global populations, as evidenced by its latest earnings call transcript. The leading brand has recently partnered with crypto exchanges to bring crypto-based solutions, especially for users who don’t have access to traditional banking solutions.

“In the crypto space, we recently signed three partnerships: one with Tala to partner on cryptocurrency solutions for the global unbanked; and two, with crypto exchanges, FTX and CoinZoom, to begin offering Visa cards,” accordingly Visa CEO and Chairman Al Kelly. “We now have more than 50 crypto wallets and platforms, up from 35 in Q1 and more than the next leading network. And collectively, they drove over $1 billion in payments volume, which represents a significant engine of growth.”

In partnership with CoinZoom, Visa has started rolling out CoinZoom Visa Cards in the US that connect to CoinZoom wallet, enabling users to spend their crypto holdings across 53 million merchant stores. In addition, the cards come in 5 options, each offering exclusive discounts, rewards, and cashback depending on the wallet balance. 

The Visa-CoinZoom initiative alongside PayPal’s recently launched “Checkout with Crypto” could prove the lynchpin of accelerating crypto retail payments that drive greater mainstream use globally. 

Crypto-Based Remittances Gain Traction

One of the areas where crypto demonstrates immense potential is the remittance space, and even Visa is warming up to this reality. In the latest earnings call, Vasant Prabhu, Vice-Chairman and CFO of Visa, mentioned,

“We’re making extraordinary progress in remittances.  For example, we signed up all the major remittance providers and we can provide a very flexible, very attractive proposition for their consumers at a very attractive cost. And remittances are almost as big in volume as foreign direct investment.”

Per recent reports, the remittance amounts to African countries witnessed a steep decline,  partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and mostly due to the surge in accompanying charges. CoinZoom, with its ZoomMe service, offers a way to circumvent the additional expenses, making it easy for even the unbanked population to send and receive both fiat and cryptocurrencies affordably. The ZoomMe service will play a key role in serving the growing number of users seeking cheaper alternatives to traditional remittance solutions. 

Through ZoomMe, users can globally transfer fiat and crypto with no fees. More specifically, ZoomMe offers a user-friendly, cost-efficient, and intuitive platform without any geographical barriers. The platform is fully regulated and licensed to operate in several countries, which further ensures that user’s funds are safe and remitted properly while adhering to country-specific guidelines.

CoinZoom CEO Todd Crosland concludes,

“We’re really proud to be a partner with Visa and offer our crypto debit card to customers in the U.S. currently, with Europe coming soon. We believe allowing consumers to spend their crypto as they would spend any other funds is helping propel the mass adoption of crypto forward, along with our peer-to-peer remittance service, ZoomMe. ZoomMe allows consumers to send USD or crypto internationally instantly for free.”