Visa’s Crypto Chief on Building the Next Generation of Money Movement

As the lines blur between traditional finance and digital assets, few global institutions are as uniquely positioned to bridge the two worlds as Visa.

At this year's Singapore FinTech Festival, Blockhead sat down with Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, to discuss how the payments giant is translating decades of experience in global money movement into the emerging era of stablecoin payments and blockchain-based settlement.

From stablecoin-linked cards already in consumers' hands to infrastructure that helps banks navigate their first steps on-chain, Sheffield shared why Visa sees digital currencies not as competition, but as an opportunity to expand the addressable market for digital payments entirely.

The Inflection Point: From POCs to Production

The conversation around digital currencies has matured dramatically in the past couple of years. For Sheffield, the shift became undeniable with the passage of GENIUS Act legislation in the U.S. this summer.

"I think the first thing we've seen is just every fintech company, every payments company now having the clarity and the comfort to actively integrate stablecoins into their products and moving way beyond just POCs," Sheffield explained. "It's become almost table stakes where, if you're a fintech in the business of moving money, you are actively integrating stablecoins, looking at using stablecoins in some way."

The evidence is visible across the industry. Remittance providers like Western Union and MoneyGram have announced stablecoin products. Neobanks are integrating blockchain rails. And perhaps most significantly, traditional banks – which a year ago struggled to justify dedicating resources to an uncertain regulatory landscape – are now building strategies and rolling out early pilots.

Sheffield pointed to a symbolic milestone: JP Morgan conducting a public blockchain transaction on stage at the Singapore FinTech Festival. "If you would have said that two or three years ago, there was a question of whether banks would ever be able to use a public blockchain," he said. Concerns about validator control and regulatory compliance that once seemed insurmountable are now being worked through in real time, Sheffield added.

The Card Connection: Making Stablecoins Spendable

Visa's most direct play in this new landscape is stablecoin-linked cards – a category that has evolved significantly from the Bitcoin-spending novelty cards issued by crypto exchanges some years ago.

Today, a new class of stablecoin-native fintechs is building products on blockchain rails, and for them, card acceptance has become essential. "It's much easier to build on top of a stablecoin than it is to build on top of traditional banks and banking-as-a-service," Sheffield observes. "But then it's become table stakes that if you want to have this stablecoin neobank, and you want to be able to have utility in the real world, you need to have a card and have acceptance tied to it."

This is where Visa's existing infrastructure becomes transformative. With 150 million merchants worldwide accepting Visa, stablecoin fintechs can offer tap-to-pay functionality on day one, without needing to convince each merchant to accept a new payment method, Sheffield said. For merchants and acquirers, the transaction is invisible; they have no idea a consumer just paid with a stablecoin because no changes were required on their end.

"Every stablecoin wallet is coming to Visa, working with our enablers, and they want to be able to have a card as part of the value proposition," Sheffield added.

But does this mean stablecoins will replace credit cards? Sheffield sees them fulfilling different roles. Consumer-to-merchant stablecoin payments haven't achieved scale for everyday purchases like coffee or e-commerce, even though they've seen adoption in specific use cases such as very high-value transactions (such as at car dealerships or for real estate) that function as wire transfer equivalents, and emerging experiments in micropayments for agentic AI systems.

"If a consumer has a balance of a stablecoin and the options are either, link it to a Visa credential, spend at any place that accepts Visa and get all the product protections of Visa, or go one by one to every merchant and figure out how to connect a wallet or scan a QR code, we think that Visa is the best product to be able to spend stablecoins," he argues.

Crucially, Visa sees its biggest opportunity in emerging markets where traditional card penetration is lower. Stablecoin products could actually drive growth in card activity, rather than cannibalizing existing volumes.

Two Sides of the Bridge: Fintechs & Banks

Visa is positioning itself at the intersection of two distinct customer bases – each with different needs and levels of blockchain sophistication.

On one side are stablecoin-native fintechs, or companies building payment products directly on blockchain rails. For them, Visa offers instant access to global merchant acceptance and the credibility that comes with a trusted brand.

On the other side are traditional banks, many of which "don't know where to start," according to Sheffield. They need infrastructure for issuing their own stablecoins, custody and key management solutions, and guidance on blockchain selection. "Do you pick one? Do you go multi-chain?" These are the questions banks are asking Visa as they begin their onchain journey, he said.

"It's exciting to have both those sides of our business of traditional products and acceptance network," Sheffield said. "Massive product market fit with stablecoin companies and then the opportunity to build brand new products and infrastructure with many of our existing clients and banks and to just sit in the middle between those two worlds."

The Long Game: Trust Takes Decades to Build

As global head of crypto for Visa, Sheffield occupies a unique position: navigating between the rapid-fire innovation culture of Web3 and the deliberate, compliance-heavy world of traditional finance. His approach reflects Visa's institutional DNA.

"One of my favorite things about Visa is we have a super long-term mindset in everything that we do," he says. "That's part of being a 60-year-old company, and that's part of recognizing that it takes decades to build trust."

This mindset shapes every aspect of Visa's crypto strategy, from which stablecoins and blockchains the company is willing to interact with, to the quarterly briefings Sheffield conducts with regulators explaining guardrails and risk evaluation procedures.

"Crypto has amazing technology that moves at this rapid pace," Sheffield acknowledges. "But commercializing it, it's not just about the technology. It's about, how can you have trust, and how can you have products that just work and that are gonna work for long periods of time, and to think about what could go wrong, and how can you mitigate it ahead of time?"

This philosophy becomes especially important as Visa enters the next frontier: decentralized finance (DeFi) and onchain lending. While DeFi is well-understood in crypto circles, it has largely been dismissed by traditional finance institutions as too novel, too weird, and too prone to hacks and bugs.

Sheffield takes a different view – asking what it would take for smart contracts and protocols to evolve from originating loans for crypto traders to serving real businesses. The requirements are substantial: controls at the smart contract layer where hacks are unacceptable, compliance frameworks for institutions that can't lend to unknown counterparties, and interoperable on-ramps and off-ramps.

"There are a bunch of these elements where crypto has these major innovations that tend to kind of get stuck in crypto and get stuck around just the technology," he explained. "And I think that you need trusted brands that do things the right way with a very long-term mindset that have high expectations and obligations of regulators to help commercialize some of these things in the real world."

The Vision: Fiat & Stablecoins, Together

Looking ahead, Sheffield sees convergence rather than competition. Visa expects to significantly scale stablecoin-linked cards, play a major role in stablecoin money movement, and help banks come on-chain with infrastructure that makes the process safer and more compliant than going it alone.

Critically, Sheffield doesn't believe it will be "fiat or stablecoin." Instead, any effective money movement platform will need to combine both, with the optimal choice depending on the market, country, transaction type, size, and real-time FX rates. Visa Direct is positioning itself to bridge these two worlds seamlessly.

"If stablecoins grow the addressable market for all digital money movement, and if you can have wallets in more people's hands, in more places across the world, that's an amazing thing for our business," Sheffield says. "Ultimately, I think a lot of the physical cash that still exists is going to be displaced and a lot of that could go into stablecoins. We plan to play a major role in helping to connect that back to the existing economy."

As digital currencies edge closer to mainstream adoption, Visa's strategy reveals a broader industry evolution from competition between "old" and "new" finance toward collaboration and convergence. For Sheffield and Visa, the future of money isn't about replacing the existing system, but enhancing it with greater efficiency, transparency, and global reach.

The merchants accepting Visa today don't know – and don't need to know – that some of those transactions are backed by stablecoins sitting on public blockchains. That seamlessness, Sheffield suggests, is exactly the point. Whether through cards in consumers' hands today or the infrastructure helping banks navigate their first blockchain transactions, Visa's experiments are laying the groundwork for a financial ecosystem where moving value becomes as frictionless as the network's sixty-year-old mission always promised.

Elsewhere

Tokenization Platform Libeara Partners GFX to Drive Pan-African Financial Inclusion

A new partnership aims to unlock retail access to government bonds through blockchain tokenization, lowering barriers to investment and expanding financial inclusion across Africa.

BlockheadBlockhead

Singapore, Germany Central Banks Sign MoU on Cross-Border Tokenised Asset Settlement

MAS and Deutsche Bundesbank to collaborate on digital asset standards and settlement solutions

BlockheadBlockhead

Hong Kong Launches Real-Value Tokenised Deposit Pilot with Major Banks

HKMA’s EnsembleTX pilot phase enables actual settlement of digital asset transactions using tokenised deposits

BlockheadBlockhead

Singapore Advances Digital Asset Framework with Stablecoin Rules, CBDC Trials

Central bank finalizes stablecoin regulations while three major banks complete first wholesale CBDC transactions

BlockheadBlockhead

Bitcoin Breaks Below $100K But Stablecoin Inflows Hint at Quiet Re-Risking

Your daily access to the back room.

BlockheadBlockhead

Blockhead is a media partner for Consensus Hong Kong 2026. Readers can save 20% on tickets using exclusive code BLOCKDESK at this link.