We missed this earlier: Visa Inc. became the first major card network to settle transactions in crypto-currencies, with the direct acceptance of payments in USD Coin (USDC), the company announced on March 29. The card payments network used the Ethereum blockchain to carry out the settlement. USD Coin is a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the US dollar. Visa chose USDC as its first digital asset because of its demand, stability, and security, the company said in a separate blog post. Visa has partnered with Crypto.com to offer the USDC settlement service and is expected to add more partners later this year. "The announcement today marks a major milestone in our ability to address the needs of fintechs managing their business in a stablecoin or cryptocurrency, and it’s really an extension of what we do every day, securely facilitating payments in all different currencies all across the world"—Jack Forestell, executive vice president and chief product officer, Visa Visa currently supports more than 160 currencies and moves billions of dollars a year across thousands of institutions. It has been working over the past year with Anchorage, the first federally chartered digital asset bank, towards using Visa's existing treasury infrastructure to support digital currencies, the release stated. Earlier, Visa’s settlement process required partners to settle in a traditional fiat currency, adding additional cost and complexity to partners dealing with digital currencies. For example, if a customer used a Crypto.com Visa card to pay for a coffee, Crypto.com had to convert digital currency…
