Al Kelly – Chairman and Head of global payment heavyweight Visa has reportedly verbally renewed the commitment of the firm on crypto payments and onramps, together with “how Visa thinks about crypto in general and our approach.”

Specifically, VISA – amassing more than $72 billion in assets as of 2019 – has reportedly been adopting an aggressive stance regarding its pursuit of  crypto payments recently, including via collaborations activating crypto debit cards, and putting investment in Zap – a crypto payments firm.

Furthermore, in the beginning January, Visa had no choice but to terminate the acquisition of a $5.3 billion, payments platform Plaid, due to antitrust-related factors.

Visa is still reportedly employing long-term plans across the industry, and believed that it is sitting in an ideal state to properly pursue this direction. 

Kelly reportedly claimed “we believe that we are uniquely positioned to help make cryptocurrencies more safe, useful and applicable for payments”, by virtue of Visa’s size, integrations, and brand recognition.

Per Kelly, blockchain by Visa’s definition divides blockchain into two categories – “cryptocurrencies that represent new assets such as Bitcoin” and function as a store-of-value, and “stable coins that are directly backed by existing fiat currencies”, which are utilized on a more regular manner for payments.

Regarding stablecoin, however, Visa is adopting an attitude with an increasing bullish level, referring to crypto “an emerging payments innovation that could have the potential to be used for global commerce, much like any other fiat currency”, and claimed that public blockchains can be viewed as payment rails, with functions the same as RPT or ACH networks.