Payment giant Visa has teamed up with the global exchange FTX and will now offer debit cards in 40 countries, focusing on Latin America, Asia and Europe. Cards are already available in the U.S. and tied to users' FTX accounts.
The main selling point of the new card is the ability to sell assets without going through a painful conversion process, usually followed by high fees. Without moving assets off an exchange, investors will not pay any additional fees and go through the process of waiting for transactions to happen.
The move made by the payment giant seemed unusual considering existing market conditions. Visa's CFO stated that even though some assets are going down, they are seeing steady interest in crypto and focusing for the long run here. The partnership was announced at a time when Bitcoin is barely holding above the $20,000 price threshold and is losing almost 60% of its value since November.
In the last few months, Visa has been actively partnering with crypto-related companies. The company joined FTX competitor Coinbase and Binance, becoming one of few companies to partner with every exchange in the top three of the industry.
During the rise of NFTs on the market, Visa partnered with Bakkt to let banks and merchants offer crypto-related services.
The CEO of FTX noticed the irony in the whole partnership considering the purpose of Bitcoin and other digital currencies that were initially designed to get around banks and payment companies similar to Visa. However, he is happy that traditional financial companies are embracing the new technology instead of opposing it for no reason.
Alex Dovbnya
Denys Serhiichuk
