This capability is enabled by Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot, with which Wirex is now live after completing a testing phase, the companies said in a Wednesday (Aug. 13) press release.
With the integration of EURC settlement, Wirex can further streamline cross-border payments and enhance the efficiency of its crypto-to-fiat conversion infrastructure, according to the release.
“Partnering with Visa to enable EURC settlements is a major step forward in our mission to make digital currencies practical for everyday payments,” Wirex Global Head of Payments Svyatoslav Garal said in the release.
Rubail Birwadker, global head of growth products and strategic partnerships at Visa, said in the release that the partnership with Wirex is an example of Visa’s efforts to expand the stablecoin capabilities on its network.
“It reflects our commitment to modernizing money movement and offering our partners the flexibility to innovate using stablecoins,” Birwadker said.
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Visa said July 31 that it added support for EURC, as well as two stablecoins backed by the U.S. dollar and two blockchains, to its settlement platform.
The company said in a press release that with the integration of EURC into the Visa Network, select partners participating in the pilot can access settlement in stablecoins backed by U.S. dollars and euros.
“Visa is building a multicoin and multichain foundation to help meet the needs of our partners worldwide,” Birwadker said at the time. “We believe that when stablecoins are trusted, scalable and interoperable, they can fundamentally transform how money moves around the world.”
Stablecoins represent an important opportunity for a subset of use cases, Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell wrote in a June 23 blog post.
These include use cases in which users want to hold U.S. dollars but don’t have access to them, when local fiat currency is highly volatile, or for certain cross-border money movement like remittances and B2B payments, Forestell wrote.
In another partnership announced in July 2024, Visa and Wirex teamed up to promote the use of digital currencies in Europe and the United Kingdom.
