Credit card company Visa Inc. said today that it plans to allow the cryptocurrency USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network via a partnership with the payment and crypto platform Crypto.com.

Visa plans to offer the option through more partner sites later this year, the credit card company told Reuters in an exclusive report.

USD Coin, USDC, is what is called a stablecoin cryptocurrency and has its value “pegged” directly to the U.S. dollar. That means that it is redeemable on a one-to-one basis for U.S. dollars, potentially making it suitable for retail financial transactions.

“We see increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we’re seeing demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access for consumers,” said Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa.

Cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin, has become a hit commodity in 2021 as the market has surged. In February the market value surpassed $50,000 after Tesla Inc.’s Chief Executive Elon Musk showed interest in the currency and began putting it on the company’s investment sheets.

Soon after, in March, bitcoin soared past $60,000 – after plunging back down towards $50,000 a few times – as more companies began to invest in the currency as well. Other large investors include Square Inc., BNY Mellon, Mastercard. Last week Musk also said that it will be possible to buy Tesla vehicles with bitcoin.

The original Crypto.com Visa card suffers because, although it can exchange cryptocurrency at merchants, it first must convert the cryptocurrency used to purchase the product or service into traditional currency at the time of sale – for example into U.S. dollars.

The wallet then deposits that currency into a bank account and it’s wired to Visa at the end of the day to settle any transactions. All that adds costs and complexity for businesses.

However, the new process on Visa’s network will use the Ethereum blockchain to remove the need to convert digital coins into traditional money in order to settle payments. In this manner, the new network acts at time-of-sale, settlements are nearly instant and don’t need to wait until the end of day to realize.

Visa said it partnered with digital asset bank Anchorage to make this happen. The first transaction was completed earlier this month and Crypto.com sent USDC to Visa’s Ethereum address at Anchorage.

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