Visa

The Central Bank of Brazil has announced the official name for its digital currency - DREX.

Visa has announced the development of a programmable financial platform for Real Digital - a digital currency of the Central Bank of Brazil (CBDC) that is scheduled for launch in 2024.

The popularity of cryptocurrency cards is growing rapidly. As reported by Visa, the total transaction volume in the first quarter accounts for 70% of the total volume of 2021. A further increase is expected.

On November 17, Amazon, the largest Internet marketplace, announced that it would discontinue Visa payments. This has led to a massive user turn to MasterCard.

It seems that cryptocurrency and bitcoin debit cards are becoming popular worldwide. Visa Inc. a giant payment and financial services company with $81 billion in total assets, has launched a bitcoin debit card in Australia and it is expected to go live in September.

Cryptocurrency cards are the modern way to spend bitcoins for purchases even if the vendor doesn’t accept cryptocurrency directly. However, users worldwide face multiple issues while using these crypto cards, including the inability to pay everywhere, bad customer service, bad exchange rates, high fees, and even closed or frozen accounts with money lost.

Bitcoin has now reached a market cap (MC) of over $1.13 trillion whereas Visa combined with MasterCard have a market cap of about $864 billion. This is a clear indication that the world's original cryptocurrency is more attractive than the two giant financial services added together.

Payment giants including PayPal, Visa and MasterCard are more than determined at driving mainstream adoption of blockchain technology and digital currencies to the next level. It's as if these companies are competing to see who will offer the best alternative as far as making payments and transactions using cryptocurrencies is concerned.

The trading volume of USD Coin (USDC) has increased dramatically following the announcement by Visa of accepting the cryptocurrency for payments. Visa Inc. will become the first payments giant to allow its over 60 million merchants to settle transactions in USDC, a 12th cryptoasset by market cap and a stablecoin that is backed by US dollar (USD) created on the Ethereum blockchain.