TechMag
Visa and PayPal recently announced that they would allow the use of cryptocurrencies on their platforms.
According to Reuters, Visa said yesterday that it would specifically allow customers to use the cryptocurrency USD Coin in transactions made through its payment network. Visa was told by the news agency that it launched a pilot program with Crypto.com, an encryption platform, and will seek other partners later this year.
“We see a growing demand from consumers around the world to be able to access, maintain and use digital currencies and we are seeing demand from our customers to be able to build products that provide that access to consumers,” Cuy Sheffield, director of Visa crypto, it said in a statement.
Visa’s latest move is expected to make transactions easier, as Crypto.com’s Visa card customers had to convert digital currency into hard money before any transactions could be made. The new system, which is based on the ethereum blockchain, would allow customers to simply pay with digital currency, without the need for conversion.
As The Verge notes, PayPal announced today that customers in the United States can now also pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash. Any payment made in cryptocurrency will be immediately converted to US dollars to complete a transaction. The post further notes that the crypto payment feature is set to automatically appear in PayPal’s wallet if a user has a “sufficient cryptocurrency balance to cover an eligible purchase.”
Both Visa and PayPal are joining a growing number of companies that are making cryptocurrencies an accepted form of payment. Earlier this month, Tesla announced that it would accept Bitcoin as payment. In 2018, PayPal’s competitor Square launched a feature for Bitcoin in its Cash app.
