Visa reports meteoric rise in crypto-linked payments, volumes cross $2.5 billion

Visa recently released its stellar quarterly results. With that, it is also the first quarter after the financial services company amped up its crypto offerings.

In its recent earnings call, Visa noted that its customers made $2.5 billion in payments with crypto-linked cards in its fiscal first quarter of 2022, reported CNBC.

The drivers of growth

The report also noted that this was 70% of the company’s crypto volume last fiscal. We should also recall that on the back of skyrocketing crypto demand, Visa had introduced global crypto advisory practice late last year to help clients. At that time, Head of Crypto at Visa, Cuy Sheffield had stated Visa has to play a critical role to bridge the gap between banks and the crypto ecosystem.

Now, Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu told CNBC,

“To us, this signals that consumers see the utility in having a Visa card linked to an account at a crypto platform. There’s value in being able to access that liquidity, to fund purchases and manage expenses, and to do so instantly and seamlessly.”

It is also worth noting that Visa has investments and partnerships across crypto platforms as part of its crypto adoption strategy. According to Sheffield, Visa is closely tracking the NFT sphere at the moment. Apart from that, the firm has partnered with ConsenSys, a blockchain technology company, to develop new infrastructure and services around CBDC networks.

With that, CNBC also noted that the payments company has close to 65 crypto wallet partners with names like Coinbase, Circle, and BlockFi on the list. Prabhu added,

“People are using their crypto-linked cards to spend in a variety of ways — retail goods and services, restaurants, travel. They’re increasingly being treated as a general-purpose account.”

Competition

What is noteworthy is Visa seeing spiking payment volume despite market volatility, according to the CFO. With that being said, competitor Mastercard had also announced a partnership with Bakkt back in October 2021 to provide crypto-payment integration. Now, as per the report, Mastercard and crypto exchange Gemini is on the way to launch a crypto reward-bearing card.

On the other hand, another competitor American Express might not be too keen to launch a crypto-linked card, CFO Jeff Campbell made is clear on the company’s latest earnings call.