<\/p>\n
Following Visa\u2019s expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities on Tuesday, industry observers believe the company\u2019s efforts with USDC via Solana could catalyze increased adoption in the wider crypto payments realm.<\/p>\n
Some of the largest \u201ccross-border e-commerce\u201d players are showing increased interest in blockchain technology as they seek to improve the speed and cost of their payment processes, an industry participant noted.<\/p>\n
Visa revealed Tuesday that, as part of pilot programs, it can now send USDC-denominated payouts via the Solana blockchain to Worldpay and Nuvei<\/a> \u2014 merchant acquirers<\/a> that can then route these payments in USDC to their end merchants.<\/p>\n The increased use of stablecoins has a compounding effect, according to Andy Bromberg, CEO of the Eco App and digital wallet Beam. Now that acquirers like Worldpay and Nuvei are receiving USDC, he added, it makes sense for them to offer USDC payouts to merchants.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd once merchants get USDC payouts, it makes sense for them to offer to pay their vendors and employees in USDC,\u201d Bromberg told Blockworks. \u201cJust a single stablecoin payment at the top of the stack can lead to a compounding set of them further down, increasing stablecoins\u2019 share of global payments.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more: <\/strong>Why USDC\u2019s market cap is half of what it was a year ago<\/a><\/p>\n Cuy Sheffield, Visa\u2019s head of crypto, told Blockworks in an email that the company plans to support additional blockchains in the future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd while we are starting with USDC, over time, we may explore adding additional stablecoins to our settlement capabilities to serve our clients and partners,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ran Goldshtein, senior vice president of payments at crypto custody platform Fireblocks, said during a Twitter Space<\/a> Tuesday that Visa\u2019s latest initiative is \u201ca major milestone\u201d proving that business-to-business money movement via crypto is a focus right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nabil Manji, head of crypto and Web3 at Worldpay, said during the Twitter Space with Goldshtein that crypto-native companies have so far been the first to lean into crypto payments.<\/p>\n But Worldpay is also conversing with large players in the \u201ccross-border e-commerce space\u201d for which payments serve as a huge part of their business, he added \u2014 naming Airbnb and Uber as the types of companies that could particularly benefit from blockchain rails.<\/p>\n Such companies deal with taking money from consumers and distributing it to others, such as hosts or drivers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile crypto payments aren\u2019t something we\u2019re focused on integrating into the platform in the near future, we\u2019re always looking at all aspects of payments for ways to improve our community\u2019s experience with it, including developments in digital assets and their use cases,\u201d an Airbnb spokesperson told Blockworks Wednesday.<\/p>\n Uber did not immediately return a request for comment. But CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a 2022 interview<\/a> with Bloomberg that the company would accept crypto as a payment option \u201cat some point.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThose companies I mentioned and dozens, if not hundreds, of others have absolutely massive payments departments and teams where the ability to get that money to those end recipients can be a differentiator for their platform,\u201d Manji said. \u201cHow quickly they can do it and how cheaply they can do it is something they really pride themselves on.\u201d<\/p>\n With the number of countries and currencies some large companies operate in, being able to improve such processes is key, Manji argued \u2014 particularly in the current \u201ccost-of-capital environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Airbnb, for example, operates in more than 220 countries and regions and processes roughly $80 billion per year in over 40 currencies, the spokesperson said. Ninety percent of the company\u2019s hosts choose to be paid in their local currency.<\/p>\n \u201cShaving days or hours off those payments is a big deal when you\u2019re talking the scale that some of those companies operate at,\u201d Manji said.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Matt Long, a general manager at the crypto trading platform FalconX, Visa\u2019s incorporation of the Solana blockchain in its latest pilot programs may appeal to businesses looking to optimize payments in terms of time and cost.<\/p>\n \u201cArguably Solana provides a faster and cheaper chain compared to Ethereum, so it should improve settlement speed for Visa\u2019s use of USDC,\u201d Long said. \u201cBy extension, the high-performance nature of Solana might help accelerate stablecoin adoption for other similar use cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s top crypto news and insights delivered to your email every evening.\u00a0Subscribe to Blockworks\u2019 free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/strong><\/p>\n Want alpha sent directly to your inbox? Get degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance, can\u2019t-miss tweets and more from\u00a0Blockworks Research\u2019s Daily Debrief<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Can\u2019t wait? Get our news the fastest way possible.\u00a0Join us on Telegram<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following Visa\u2019s expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities on Tuesday, industry observers believe the company\u2019s efforts with USDC via Solana could catalyze increased adoption in the wider crypto payments realm. Some of the largest \u201ccross-border e-commerce\u201d players are showing increased interest in blockchain technology as they seek to improve the speed and cost of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-151344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151347,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151344\/revisions\/151347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New companies likely to enter space<\/h2>\n
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