Payment giant Visa will continue to support the growth and adoption of the crypto industry as part of its business, the company said in its latest crypto update.

In an official statement on Wednesday, Visa announced that its crypto-enabled cards had total spending of more than $ 1 billion in the first half of 2021.

The company found that Visa is working with 50 major players in the crypto industry, as well as with crypto card programs that enable users to exchange and spend digital currencies at 70 million merchants worldwide. Given the level of spending on crypto-linked Visa cards, the company said, “It is clear that the crypto community sees value in linking digital currencies to their global network of crypto assets.” Visa.

Visa stressed that supporting digital currencies does not require global merchants to accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) directly. As previously reported, Visa has partnered with major crypto players like the crypto exchange platform Crypto.com to enable a crypto payment system for fiat transactions. The company has also worked closely with other major crypto companies such as FTX Exchange, Coinbase, CoinZoom, and others.

The company also claims that stablecoins – cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of other assets or fiat currencies such as the US dollar – are “starting to fulfill the promise of digital fiat,” with developer-friendliness combined with fiat reliability. Reserves is supported. “Stablecoins are well on their way to becoming an important part of the broader digital transformation of financial services, and Visa is excited to help shape and support this development,” added the company. :

“We at Visa are very busy connecting the crypto economy to our ‘network of networks’, a strategy that aims to add value to all forms of monetary transactions, be it on the Visa network or beyond.”

Connected: BlockFi begins shipping Visa-backed Bitcoin credit cards

Visa, one of the largest payment companies in the world, made a huge foray into the crypto industry last year, partnering with Goldman Sachs-backed blockchain firm Circle to make the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) compatible with certain credit cards. Since then, the company has reiterated its commitment to crypto and fiat payments on the rise, focusing specifically on stablecoin-based integrations.