According to Yahoo Finance, the surge has mostly been attributed to the institutional investment from Wall Street firms, and public buy-in from big consumer-facing payment such as PayPal, Square, and potentially Visa. PayPal will add Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to PayPal and Venmo in 2021, while Square added Bitcoin to its Cash App in 2018, and in 2020 bought USD 50 million worth of Bitcoin for the company’s balance sheet.
Still, Visa’s crypto steps during 2020 have likely gone less noticed, the online publication adds. And this might be attributed to its partnerships, as opposed to the outright solo initiatives from PayPal and Square. These partnerships include names and product offerings such as Coinbase, a large US-based crypto exchange, Binance, a large non-US crypto exchange, Fold, a Bitcoin rewards app, BlockFi, an exchange that offers interest on customers’ crypto holdings, Circle’s USDC stablecoin (a cryptocurrency pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar).
Important to note that not all Visa-branded cards are launched through a direct partnership with Visa since some go through an issuing partner. But all of them require an explicit approval from Visa.
Visa tells Yahoo Finance it is ‘actively working with over 25 digital currency companies on a variety of Bitcoin-related products and services, cards being just one area’. Visa notes it has an enhanced due diligence process for any company that we work with offering a program connected to a crypto wallet’.
