VISA, a San Francisco-based company claims that people will continue spending their digital crypto assets despite the bearish market. This giant payment institution has partnered up with FTX, a crypto exchange in 40 countries. The countries will mainly be from Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
This partnership will open new horizons for Visa and FTX users. Their cards will now be directly linked to their FTX exchange accounts. By doing so, they will be able to pay directly using their crypto assets mimicking that of a normal bank account.
Despite the bearish trend, the interest rates for crypto have been steady. The CFO of Visa, Vasant Prabhu, mentions that their job as a payment institution is not to be a judge of crypto, but rather to provide their customers with the payment methods they wish to use.
The timing of this partnership was rather surprising as, since November, all cryptocurrencies have taken a hit, with Bitcoin cut down by half. The trading volume on Friday morning was only $20,000 which has reduced to 57% since January.
Visa is adding more than 70 crypto partnerships including other widely popular crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. Mastercard, their rival payment institution has adopted similar methods of expanding. They partnered up with Coinbase on NFTs and merchants can begin offering crypto payment options.
The crypto community has been split with these recent developments as cryptocurrency was initially designed to avoid banks and other traditional institutions. FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried acknowledges that cryptocurrency will disrupt the traditional economy however, traditional institutions adopting this change will expand the cryptocurrency market potential.
The Visa and FTX convert will be completed “behind the scenes” as stated by Prabhu. Bankman-Fried further explains that in poorer countries, people are looking for a better alternative for payment, unlike in the US, where crypto is seen as cool and valuable.
