Visa Bets on Stablecoin Demand With Investment in BVNK

Visa announced another crypto venture this week, revealing an investment in stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK. 

London-based BVNK announced the “strategic investment” from Visa via the payment giant’s Visa Ventures arm. It did not reveal the size of the investment, but said it came following the firm’s $50 million Series B round in December. 

BVNK says it’s building a “real time, 24-7, 365 payments network” for businesses using blockchains. 

Only last week, Visa announced that it was partnering with Bridge, a unit of payment services provider Stripe, to offer a new stablecoin service in Latin America. 

Stablecoins in the crypto world are digital tokens pegged to non-volatile assets—usually dollars. They have typically been used by traders to enter and exit transactions, but in recent years have also been popular in countries with collapsing currencies. 

Investors can buy stablecoins—which are available on a number of top crypto networks, like Ethereum and Solana—and hold them in digital wallets. Private companies Tether and Circle respectively issue the two biggest stablecoins by market cap, USDT and USDC, though Circle recently filed to go public.

Visa’s Head of Growth Products and Partnerships Rubail Birwadker said: “Stablecoins are fast becoming a part of global payment flows, and Visa invests in new technologies and builders like BVNK, staying at the forefront of what’s next in commerce to better serve our clients and partners.”

Neither BVNK nor Visa could immediately be reached for comment.

Visa has in the past hinted at a number of crypto-orientated ventures, including helping merchants accept stablecoins on Solana’s network. 

Its rival, Mastercard, is also pushing ahead with stablecoin-related plans, and last week announced a new collab with payments processor Nuvei and crypto exchange OKX to allow customers to spend digital tokens. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward