Visa is working with Anchorage to allow customers at traditional banks to "buy and sell digital assets."
Visa (V) is
piloting a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that will
allow banks to offer bitcoin services, the payments giant announced
Wednesday.
The
Visa Crypto APIs pilot program will let clients “easily connect into
the infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally
chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell
digital assets such as bitcoin as an investment within their existing consumer experiences,” Visa said in a press statement.
Visa
envisions a product set that extends to other cryptocurrencies and
stablecoins as well as other crypto services such as trading, Visa
crypto lead Cuy Sheffield told CoinDesk in an interview. Digital bank First Boulevard is the first bank involved in the pilot; Visa has issued a wait list for other banks.
Previously,
Visa had been focused on helping crypto companies issue bank cards and
has partnered with 35 crypto firms to date, but this is the first time
the company has offered crypto services to banks.
Last week, Visa CEO Al Kelly said during an earnings call
that stablecoins could be used for “global commerce,” adding that “to
the extent a specific digital currency becomes a recognized means of
exchange, there’s no reason why we cannot add it to our network.”
‘Next phase’
“This
is shifting to the next phase of Visa’s strategy where we’re looking at
how Visa can also be a bridge between the thousands of financial
institutions … and help them tap into the growing world of crypto assets
and blockchain networks,” Sheffield told CoinDesk in an interview.
“We’re excited to see what early tests and consumer engagement look like
for things like dollar-cost averaging to buy bitcoin or for things like
earning bitcoin back as rewards.”
Similarly,
digital asset manager NYDIG tapped banking technology provider Moven to
offer NYDIG’s APIs for buying, selling and holding crypto to Moven’s
bank customers. Both products come in the wake of several letters from
the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency giving banks the green light to custody crypto and the ability to conduct payments and other activities with stablecoins.
Visa’s news also comes after Anchorage became the first OCC-approved national crypto bank,
although Sheffield said that Visa had been working on this product with
Anchorage and regulators long before the custodian’s charter was
granted.
Creating a Black crypto bank
The news also coincided with an announcement from Visa that it would be partnering with five Black-focused banks and fintechs to offer financial and business services that cater to the Black community.
First
Boulevard, the first firm to join the Visa pilot, is a digital bank
that is building tools to help African Americans passively build wealth
and will launch sometime in early 2021. The bank plans on using the
bitcoin services and its partnership with Visa to educate its customers
about bitcoin as a way to close the general wealth disparities faced by
Black communities, said Donald Hawkins, president and CEO of First
Boulevard.
In
the future, Hawkins said he hopes his customers come to the bank rather
than YouTube for information about investing in crypto.
Currently,
First Boulevard offers customers 15% cash back for spending at
Black-owned businesses. In the future, Hawkins plans to allow bank
customers to put those rewards into crypto investments or high-yield
crypto savings accounts.
First Boulevard plans to partner with Visa on financial education in addition to using the crypto services plugins.
“Crypto
is a gateway to financial literacy,” Sheffield said. “It’s much easier
to get people excited about money and important concepts around
investing by just explaining what bitcoin is.”
The bank also plans to offer resources for investing in real estate as well as micro-investing.
Normally,
banks in traditional finance have to get buy-in from the board and
management before making a play in the crypto space. At First Boulevard,
jumping into crypto was “serendipitous,” Hawkins said.
“Our
target market is Black Gen Z and millennial women,” Hawkins said. “The
majority of our team is made up of exactly our target market. … So
cryptocurrency has been a hot topic in our company since the very
beginning.”
source link: https://www.coindesk.com/visa-anchorage-crypto-apis-pilot-for-banks
