American Financial Company Visa Launches Crypto Consultation For Clients

Visa, an American financial service company on Wednesday, December 8, announced the launch of new counselling and advice services to assist its clients in navigating the cryptocurrency realm.

In its press release, the company mentioned that its crypto advisory practice, which is part of its consulting and analytics division, will provide guidance to financial institutions, retailers, and other firms on topics ranging from implementing crypto features to exploring non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Visa named American bank UMB as a client that’s already using its crypto advisory services.

“We think it’s a critical role for Visa to play to help be this bridge between banks and the crypto ecosystem,” said Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, as reported by CoinDesk, a news platform on crypto currency.

Nikola Plecas, Visa’s European crypto lead, mentioned that the corporation processed $3.5 billion in digital currency transactions through its crypto-linked card schemes from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, CNBC reported. 

“Some of these leading exchanges have millions or, in some instances, tens of millions of users,” Plecas told CNBC, adding that the company allows users to spend their crypto at over 80 million merchants.

Meanwhile, various tech businesses are putting pressure on Visa. For example, due to the company’s “high costs,” Amazon announced last month that it will no longer accept Visa credit cards in the United Kingdom. In Australia and Singapore, the e-commerce platform has taken similar actions against Visa, according to CNBC. 

“We’ve seen a material shift in our clients’ mindset in the last year, from a desire to explore and experiment with crypto, to actually building a strategy and product roadmap,” said Carl Rutstein, Global Head, Visa Consulting & Analytics.

In a recent study conducted by Visa, 18 per cent of global participants revealed they would be likely or very likely to switch primary banks to one offering crypto-related products over the next year, Coindesk reported.

Prices of Bitcoin fell 4.48 per cent in the last 24 hours and the coin was trading at $49,232.24 at 5:00 pm, according to data from global crypto exchange coinmarketcap.com. The price of Ethereum went down by 3.05 per cent in the last 24 hours and was trading at $4,267.25 at 5:00 pm. Binance Coin (BNB) witnessed a fall of 2.37 per cent and was trading at $573.04. Coins such as Solana (SOL) was trading at $185.48, falling 8.09 per cent, and Cardano (ADA) fell 6.15 per cent to $1.35.