By providing an additional way to convert cryptocurrency to fiat money without via a centralized exchange, multinational payment giant Visa is stepping up its efforts to promote the use of cryptocurrencies.
Visa and Transak, a Web3 infrastructure provider, announced on January 30 that they would be collaborating to offer cryptocurrency withdrawals and payments via the Visa Direct service.
Users may now withdraw cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, straight to a Visa debit card from a wallet like MetaMask as a result of a new connection. Instantly accessible, the connection facilitates the conversion of cryptocurrency to fiat currency and allows payments at 130 million merchant locations that accept Visa.
According to Yanilsa Gonzalez-Ore, head of Visa Direct for North America, Transak is providing its consumers with a faster, easier, and more connected experience by facilitating real-time card withdrawals through Visa Direct. This makes it simpler to transfer cryptocurrency holdings into fiat currency.
According to Transak’s marketing head and investor relations lead Harshit Gangwar, the partnership greatly increases the number of ways to convert cryptocurrencies into fiat money and marks a critical turning point in integrating the crypto and conventional financial services worlds.
Through the arrangement, users can immediately convert at least 40 cryptocurrencies to fiat without using centralized exchanges, and they can do so from 145 different countries. Transak’s global coverage page lists the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, Malta, Singapore, Turkey, Portugal, and other countries as among the supported nations.
Gangwar highlighted the more easy and easily available nature of the transactions made possible by the integration, saying that this is a significant step towards the adoption and use of cryptocurrencies in the mainstream.
Gangwar claims that users of decentralized platforms and wallets, including as MetaMask, Ledger, Trust Wallet, and others, will gain a great deal from the partnership. He pointed out that users of MetaMask can now easily off-ramp straight from their wallet to the Visa card, improving the usefulness and practicality of their digital assets.
As per Lorenzo Santos, senior product manager at MetaMask, the partnership between Visa and Transak does in fact make a major features possible for MetaMask users. He declared:
Transak’s integration with Visa expands MetaMask’s global reach, offering greater flexibility in smooth cryptocurrency-to-fiat transactions.
Transak’s Gangwar claims that the platform is a part of the integration since it maintains different jurisdictional licenses and makes sure that anti-money laundering and know-your-customer technology is in place. The executive continued, “This allows Transak to authenticate the user and lawfully permit such transactions.”
In recent years, Visa, one of the biggest businesses in the payments sector globally, has been aggressively investigating the potential applications of cryptocurrencies. Visa made a significant foray into the cryptocurrency space in 2020 when it teamed up with blockchain startup Circle to enable the USDC stablecoin on specific Visa cards. As part of its ongoing efforts to increase stablecoin acceptance, Visa began to accept USDC payments settled on the Solana blockchain in September 2023.
