VISA Inc., one of the world’s largest payment processing firms, has announced its testing of stablecoin settlements on its network.
Cuy Sheffield, CEO of VISA’s crypto division, confirmed the development during the StarkWare Sessions 2023. Sheffield hopes that the payment giant’s new feature will help consumers develop “muscle memory” regarding settlements.
VISA has been restricted in transmitting funds as frequently as possible due to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system.
To overcome this barrier, VISA has tested the feasibility of accepting settlement payments made using stablecoins on the Ethereum blockchain.
Sheffield stated, “We’ve been testing how to actually accept settlement payments from issuers in USDC starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum.
So, these are large value settlement payments.” In a proposal made last year, VISA advocated implementing programmable, automatic payments on Ethereum using a technology called “account abstraction.” The firm suggested deploying the system on Ethereum‘s layer 2 network, StarkNet.