Visa Inc., an American multinational for financial services, is all set to introduce its suite of digital currency APIs to enable customers to trade and hold digital currency.
On February 3, 2021, the financial services multinational introduced First Boulevard bank to be its pilot bank piloting the Visa digital currency APIs.
First Boulevard bank is a digital institution focused on financially strengthening Black America.
Another update on the Visa digital currency journey
Digital currency services offered by Visa are made possible with the help of its business partner Anchorage. Anchorage became the pilot federally chartered digital currency bank in the USA after receiving a national bank charter by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
What experts say
Donald Hawkins, Founder and CEO at First Boulevard, said, “The First Boulevard mission is to help Black America build wealth.” He added, “We are thrilled to partner with the leader in digital payments, Visa, and leverage their crypto APIs to provide another channel for the Black community to access crypto as a new asset class that can help build Black wealth.”
Diogo Monica, President and Co-Founder at Anchorage, said, “Visa’s crypto APIs pilot program is a significant step forward both for the proliferation of crypto as an asset class and for accessibility and inclusion in payments and financial services. We are thrilled to be working alongside Visa and First Boulevard to build the infrastructure for a more secure and equitable financial future.”
Visa. Digital currency. Road ahead
On the positive front, Visa is working toward further integration of digital currencies into the legacy banking spectrum. The digital currency and blockchain space have recently gained an inflow of new users that belong to the retail investor and corporate space. Visa puts efforts to seize and make the most of this opportunity as they already are a big name in the payment processing genre and can leverage their economy of scale.
In the coming months, the payments processing giant holds an excellent chance to transition more financial institutions and offload them its digital currency API waitlist and get them to conduct their digital currency APIs.
About Visa
Visa is an American financial service multinational headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. The company enables electronic fund transfers across the globe and most commonly via Visa-branded debit, credit, and prepaid cards.
In the broader picture, Visa doesn’t issue cards or set any fees for consumers. Instead, it offers financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that these institutions later use to offer prepaid and cash-access to their audience.
