Visa does not view Bitcoin as a payment system - CEO Kelly

The largest credit card company, Visa is not very happy with the popularity of Bitcoin, more so because it is seen as a disruption that is threatening its hegemony. Though the company has never spoken against it publicly but the company’s CEO preferred to break his silence on it, by stating that Bitcoin is not a payment system.

In an interview recorded at New York’s National Retail Federation conference, Alfred Kelly was pressed for his thoughts on Bitcoin, where he was heard saying that he does not view it as payment system player. “We at Visa won’t process transactions that are cryptocurrency-based. We will only process fiat currency-based transactions,” he said.

He further said, “While alternatives such as bitcoin cash can be used for peer-to-peer transactions and micro-payments, the cryptocurrency market as a whole has yet to threaten Visa’s supremacy.”

This comes during a time when Visa subsidiary Wavecrest cut off debit card services to dozens of European crypto card companies less than a fortnight ago. The company however retorted that it was irregularities on behalf of Wavecrest clients that triggered the ban and denied any counter measure to have been adopted to check on the threat posed by cryptocurrencies.

Visa stated that the crypto cards had been suspended due to “continued non-compliance with our operating rules”, and insisted it wasn’t part of a targeted campaign against cryptocurrency. Many in the crypto community weren’t so sure, and Alfred Kelly’s comments this week will only bolster their suspicions. They arrived on the same day that the US Treasury described cryptocurrencies as an “evolving threat”, whose undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence made the usual noises about bitcoin and terrorism.