Visa, Mastercard, And PayPal Are Stepping Up Their Cryptocurrency Game
While we wait for the latest earnings results, it is a good moment to recap previous quarters' results. Travel restrictions, caused by the pandemic, as well as general downtrend since last year, made the cross-border volumes significantly decline in the last quarter of 2020, for both Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA). Even though the overall payments were up, debit spending has risen, while credit spending decreased.
Luckily, as vaccination started opening the economies, the quarter ended on 31. March brought us better results. Visa achieved an 11 cents better quarterly profit per share than estimated. Revenues were also higher than expected, which means the continuous growth of online shopping was boosted with some more traditional transactions. So, this was the right time for both companies to increase their engagement with cryptocurrencies.
More Details About Visa's Previous Quarter Results
When looking year-over-year, Visa's total payments volume increased by 11%, in the quarter which ended 31. March. Credit growth remained the same, but the debit payments jumped 24%. This growth was higher than the same period last year when debit volume increased 9% and credit volume increased by 1%. The biggest volume growth was achieved in the US, one of Visa's biggest markets – 17.6%. We can only assume that most of Visa's customers were in a better financial position than a year ago. The improvement in the US unemployment rate supports this fact.
Visa's Crypto Future
As the cryptocurrency sector continues to develop, Visa decided to get deeper and position itself, so it benefits from that growth. Together with BlockFi, a platform for leveraging your cryptocurrency, Visa entered the crypto universe with its first credit card supporting a crypto rewards program. Also, the company announced that it is thinking to settle transactions in US Coin. This should open the doors for some new partnerships, which should all bring new revenues.
Mastercard's And Paypal's Response
Mastercard is doing the same thing with the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. Together, they launched the credit card that rewards its users in digital currency (bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies). So, the users of this card, which is issued by WebBank, get up to 3% of the purchased value, and the "reward" is deposited in the user's Gemini account.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL), one of the mainstream financial companies, based in California, also stepped into the cryptocurrency arena, through its peer-to-peer service Venmo. More than 70 million Venmo users can buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies in its digital wallets, allowing them to spend their digital assets to pay millions of merchants.
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