00:00Can you just talk a little bit about the demand that you were seeing before you created this product, like
00:05who's it for and why?
00:07Yeah, sure. So we talk to banks and financial institutions, you know, all over the world.
00:12And I think at this stage, you know, every bank needs to have a stablecoin strategy.
00:17And so they were coming to us and really finding a challenge of where to start, what infrastructure do I
00:23need?
00:23And so we built the Visa stablecoin platform to be the single place that banks can go to get the
00:29infrastructure to build on chain and then to combine that with professional services where we have a Visa consulting team
00:35that goes out and helps banks understand the market, figure out which use cases they should focus on and then
00:40be able to execute those those use cases on our infrastructure.
00:43So you launched the Visa stablecoin platform three weeks ago. What have you seen so far? What's been the feedback
00:49that you've gotten so far?
00:51Yeah, I think the challenge that a lot of banks have is it's really hard to cobble together vendors across
00:58the different components of the stack and particularly going through risk committees, you know, partnering with a crypto startup.
01:06It's much easier to buy from the partners that they know and trust that they work with already.
01:11And so we're trying to go out and partner and build and invest and create the best set of capabilities
01:16that we can put into one place.
01:18And then we're the place that can deliver that to the bank the most easily for them to consume.
01:23Kai, the Visa dashboard shows adjusted stablecoin volume hit a record $1.79 trillion in June, $8.8 trillion in
01:29the first half of this year.
01:31Much of that happened. Most of that happened without Visa. Why do stablecoins need Visa?
01:37So I think the stablecoin business at Visa is in an amazing spot right now, mostly with the lead that
01:44we have with stablecoin link cards.
01:45We look at stablecoins as great infrastructure, but they don't have acceptance.
01:50And so you need the ability, if stablecoins are going to become a form of money, to spend them at
01:54200 million merchants across the world except Visa.
01:57So we've seen stablecoin link cards growing at triple digits over the past year.
02:01And nearly every week, there are new stablecoin link card programs that are going live across our network.
02:07You might have seen Western Union today. They just launched their stablecoin card.
02:11And so we think there's a whole generation of fintechs building on the infrastructure that still recognize the need and
02:16the value that Visa can provide,
02:18connecting them back to the existing financial ecosystem.
02:21Kai, the Visa stablecoin platform launched with OpenUSD, which is from the Open Standard Consortium.
02:26Not USDC, not USDT. This is a new stablecoin that I don't think a lot of people have heard of.
02:33USDC, by contrast, has $70 billion in circulation. USDT has more than $180 billion.
02:38Why would Visa launch with a stablecoin that few people have heard of that doesn't have a lot of market
02:43share,
02:43rather than going with something that institutions already use that has a name recognition?
02:50Yeah, so I think it's super early for the stablecoin ecosystem overall.
02:54You know, we joined OpenStandard, and we're proud to work with about 140 partners around designing a stablecoin
03:01that we think has economic and governance properties that can help set it up to scale.
03:05But at the same time, we continue to support USDC and other stablecoins,
03:09and we work with them across Settlement, which just reached about $10 billion in annualized volume across our network.
03:17And so we're going to continue to support many stablecoins, but we think that there's still room and opportunity
03:23for new stablecoins to emerge like OpenStandard that can have the right governance properties to help them scale.
03:29Kai, as we mentioned, we're just a few weeks into this. Visa's just a few weeks into this.
03:32What's the metric that you're going to use internally come the end of the year that says this has been
03:37a success, just in 30 seconds?
03:39Yeah, I think today it's just the number of banks and institutions that are onboarding.
03:44You know, we have a sandbox right now.
03:46You know, the team is just overwhelmed with demand of clients, you know, coming to us.
03:50But it takes time for institutions to be able to launch these products.
03:52So we've got to be able to get them into the environment, help them figure out use cases,
03:57and then deploy those use cases into the market over the coming year.
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