The U.S. Patent Office published a Visa patent application from November that would create a gateway to allow for central bank currencies to the digitized; with the onset of the current crisis this idea could help the concept gain greater traction; “This is clever. It positions Visa as a potential government partner to quickly deploy a digital currency that, with some significant effort, could ride the Visa rails,” said Tim Sloane, VP of Payments Innovation and the Director of the Emerging Technologies Advisory Service at Mercator, to American Banker; the topic of central bank digital currencies has been one that has gained more traction in recent years and the pandemic has reignited the concept as a means of distributing government stimulus; Facebook’s Libra project was the initial catalyst and helped to push central banks to think more deeply about the idea; Visa’s patent application does not talk about cryptocurrencies but rather making existing currencies digital; Visa isn’t trying to displace existing currencies; it will extend existing currencies into cyberspace,” Sloane said. American Banker
