Visa is hopping aboard the stablecoin hype with its latest partnership with Bridge, a Web3 subsidiary of fintech firm Stripe. The US-based payment cards giant said that developers using Bridge to create their apps can now offer stablecoin-linked Visa cards to their end customers across multiple nations as part of this partnership. Bridge is a developer-first payments company that helps creators juggle between currencies to suit their convenience. Stripe acquired Bridge for $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,462 crore) in February this year, making this its most significant acquisition so far.
Both the companies announced the development on April 30. They said that the main aim of this deal is to introduce stablecoins as legitimate payment options for day-to-day purchases that can be facilitated through cards, mimicking a familiar, traditional method of making transactions.
“We’re focused on integrating stablecoins into Visa’s existing network and products in a frictionless and secure way,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer. Commenting on the partnership with Bridge, Forestell said, “It represents a significant move in helping to make stablecoins usable in everyday life, giving consumers more choice in how they manage and spend their money.”
Understanding the Mechanics
Developers building with Bridge are now authorised to add stablecoin-linked Visa cards to their products and services. Against this backdrop, Bridge will take care of the conversion of stablecoins from and to those cards on behalf of the developers. Bridge has partnered with Kansas, US-based Lead Bank as the financial institution partner to process these transactions.
Developers across Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Chile will first get to tap into this new offering.
“This is a massive unlock for developers who can now build truly scalable issuing products for their users. “Now everyone will be able to use stablecoins with just a tap of their card,” said Zach Abrams, CEO and Co-Founder, Bridge.
The announcement noted that users of Bridge-based solutions will be able to add these stablecoins-enabled cards to supported digital wallets as well. The cards will be accepted at over 150 million merchant locations that already take Visa payments.
Visa Follows Mastercard, PayPal towards Stablecoin
In recent months, the institutional interest towards exploring stablecoins has notably risen. Stablecoins are crypto assets that derive their values from underlying reserved assets – keeping them more stable than other cryptocurrencies. Owing to their usability as an instant and secure cross-border payment option, many nations like the US are now working on regulating stablecoin uses.
Earlier this week, Visa competitor Mastercard also announced a similar initiative. Mastercard partnered with OKX and Nuvie to launch a payment ecosystem allowing buyers and merchants to make and receive payments using stablecoins.
PayPal, the US-based online payments gateway, also announced a stablecoin-based rewards programme for the holders of its own PYUSD stablecoin.
Standard Chartered has predicted that the size of the stablecoin market could surge by about 10-fold to $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,71,29,830 crore) within the next three years. Its report last month said that the US regulation of stablecoins will boost their use cases globally.
