In a recent interview, Alfred F. Kelly, Jr. (aka “Al Kelly”), who is Chairman and CEO of Visa Inc., said that he hopes that the collapse of FTX will lead to good crypto regulation, which is “what’s necessary to build back confidence for people.”
According to a report by The Daily Hodl, the outgoing CEO of the world’s second-largest card payment organization, said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”:
“I hope one good thing that comes out of this FTX disaster for their investors and their employees, is that we see an acceleration towards regulation and leaning into good stablecoin regulation. Because I think that that is what’s necessary to build back confidence for people. And we’ll see over time...
“We are setting up for the reality of crypto potentially having a role in payments and money movement. You know, we don’t pick winners or losers. We ultimately let the consumer and the experience decide. But we’re creating on and off-ramps for crypto players, putting Visa cards in wallets, being able to convert the stablecoin to a fiat currency, and being able to use their Visa card to shop anywhere they want to shop. We’re even working on being able to settle with a merchant at the end of the day who wants to get settled in a stablecoin versus settled in a currency.“
Here is how FTX Co-Founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) first announced the FTX Card on 21 January 2022:
On 7 October 2022, CNBC journalist Kate Rooney reported that Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu told CNBC in a phone interview:
“Even though values have come down there’s still steady interest in crypto. We don’t have a position as a company on what the value of cryptocurrency should be, or whether it’s a good thing in the long run — as long as people have things they want to buy, we want to facilitate it.“
SBF told CNBC (by phone):
“It’s a technology that we absolutely see disrupting traditional payment networks. There’s a decision you have to make as a traditional payments company: do you want to lean into this or do you want to fight against it? I respect the fact that many of them are leaning into it.“
SBF went on to say that although “many of these things like are potentially cool and valuable in the United States”, there are places in the world “with really poor alternatives for payment rails and huge demand for something better.”
Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, said in an email to TechCrunch:
“Crypto is community-driven; we know we can’t deliver the best crypto experiences on our own. With this partnership, we’re bringing together FTX, one of the largest and most innovative crypto platforms, with Visa and our network of 80 million merchant locations.“
On 14 November 2022, three days after FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, CoinDesk reported that a Visa spokesperson had told them:
“We have terminated our global agreements with FTX and their U.S. debit card program is being wound down by their issuer.“
On 17 November 2022, CNBC reported that Visa had named Ryan McInerney, who is been President at Visa since 2013, to replace Al Kelly as Visa CEO effective 1 February 2023.
