Bitcoin Boom Is Driving Payments Giants to Further Embrace Crypto

As the price of bitcoin continues to surge to a historical level of nearly $57,000 and its market cap has for the first time hit the $1 trillion mark, globally top payments players including Visa, Mastercard and Paypal have recently implementing further measures to support the use of cryptocurrency. These payments giants are looking to make crypto transactions safe in the future.

As the world's leader in digital payments, Visa's advanced global processing network VisaNet has the capability of handling over 65,000 transaction messages a second. Following creating partnerships with 35 of the leading digital currency platforms and wallets such as Coinbase, Binance, crypto.com, BlockFi, Bitpanda and Fold, and piloting a suite of Crypto application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow banks to offer bitcoin services earlier this month, Visa will work with wallets and exchanges to give users the opportunity to purchase cryptocurrencies that represent assets using their Visa credentials or to cash out these currencies to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants globally where Visa is accepted, according to AI Kelly, CEO of Visa. In terms of fiat-backed digital currencies including stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, Kelly confirmed that they were an emerging payments innovation having the potential to be used for global commerce, just like other fiat currencies.

Additionally, New York-headquartered Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments space with connections across over 210 countries and territories. On 10 February 2021, the firm announced that this year Mastercard will start supporting cryptocurrencies directly on its network. The move will enable customers, merchants and businesses to transfer through the Mastercard network without converting cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies.

Founded in 1998, PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than two decades. Now, the company's platform is empowering over 375 million consumers and merchants in over 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. Last Friday, the American payments giant also announced that in the first half of 2021, it will provide users in the U.K. and a number of additional international markets the opportunity to trade crypto. PayPal will also expand crypto offerings to Venmo, a payment app the company bought in 2014.