In the past two days, the AI agent protocol meme coin PAYAI, which integrates ElizaOS, libp2p, and IPFS on Solana, has surged from zero to a market value of 10 million dollars, currently maintaining around 3 million dollars, attracting market attention. However, what revived it was not the technology or product of PayAI, but rather a mention by Cuy Sheffield, head of Visa's crypto division, on the X platform.
Image source: TradingView
Last August, Visa participated in investing in an AI agent project called Payman, advocating for on-chain agent economics that allow AI to pay human 'employers' to complete marketing tasks. Since then, Visa has shown interest in AI + Crypto, not just out of curiosity, but as a strategic judgment after in-depth research. This also provides important context for understanding Visa's ongoing advancement in on-chain settlement systems, stablecoin deployment paths, and systematic layout for the next generation of payment networks.
With today's significant breakthrough in the U.S. stablecoin bill, Visa is no longer just an intermediary of traditional payments; it is attempting to build a completely new settlement network structure centered around stablecoins. In April 2025, this direction was given clearer articulation — Visa officially joined the USDG stablecoin alliance led by Paxos, becoming the first traditional financial institution to participate in building a de-banked global settlement system.
Visa is migrating the financial intermediary model it has dominated for decades onto the chain, and in the future crypto infrastructure, it does not want to become the second SWIFT but intends to be the first 'on-chain Visa'.
From an edge product manager to the head of Visa Crypto
Cuy Sheffield's career path is hard to define in traditional terms. Growing up in a rural town in Ohio, basketball was his way of building confidence and finding identity early on. In college, he chose to study at Pomona College in California, gradually developing a strong interest in entrepreneurship and technology. After graduating, he joined a startup called TrialPay, focusing on the mobile app advertising ecosystem. During the process of building genuine relationships with clients, he unexpectedly developed a passion for sales, which laid the foundation for his later transformation.
In 2015, TrialPay was acquired by Visa, and Sheffield joined Visa as a product manager, subsequently working in the corporate strategic partnerships department, mainly responsible for connecting with startup tech companies. It was during this time that he began to pay attention to early signs of the crypto industry and sought to understand the potential systemic opportunities within it.
In 2018, the number of cryptocurrency users worldwide surpassed 40 million for the first time, and Visa established a special 'Crypto Innovation Exploration' initiative. Sheffield took this opportunity to propose forming an internal crypto team, aiming not to invest in crypto assets, but to serve a group of users ignored by traditional payment networks. His logic is straightforward: Emerging wallets and trading platforms like Coinbase, Binance, and MetaMask are attracting tens of millions of young users, but they can hardly complete payments within Visa's system — this is a structural user gap Visa faces and also an opportunity for an underlying technology update.
He convinced management and skeptics alike. Starting in 2019, he officially became the head of Visa's Crypto division, embarking on a collaborative journey with companies like Anchorage and Coinbase. His personal introduction on LinkedIn states: 'Committed to bringing Visa into the Web3 era.' He has gradually been seen by the industry as a key translator between the traditional financial world and the on-chain system.
Image source: Rhythm BlockBeats
Sheffield openly stated that he is passionate about the crypto world, consistently engaging on Twitter to learn and interact in order to understand community language and technological boundaries. He also mentioned that his 'superpower' is the ability to translate complex concepts into easily understandable language, always striving to be one of the best at explaining the crypto world to the public. This ability to explain and his personal involvement have gradually made him stand out within Visa, becoming a promoter and spokesperson for this systemic transformation.
Visa's 'Crypto Lab'
Visa has always been known for its stability, not being keen on or fond of 'radical narratives'. The company's shift towards crypto technology is not a sudden strategic leap, but a gradual evolutionary process. Under Cuy Sheffield's leadership, Visa has divided its on-chain strategy into multiple phases, from initial technical recognition to subsequent business restructuring, while maintaining a balanced judgment of risks and opportunities.
The first phase roughly began in 2019, during which Visa's main goal was not to integrate blockchain technology but to establish a basic understanding of the emerging crypto ecosystem. The company successively invested in custodial service providers like Anchorage to ensure compliance when accessing on-chain assets, while also collaborating with trading platforms like Coinbase and Crypto.com to issue crypto Visa cards, initially probing into the payment paths and consumption behaviors of crypto users.
In 2021, Visa released the Crypto API, providing banks with access tools for stablecoin settlement. The essence of this move is not to directly enter the on-chain settlement market, but to observe how crypto assets affect its payment model through 'embedded technology'. Sheffield once compared this phase to the 'e-commerce forcing the credit card system' — crypto is not the enemy that disrupts Visa but an external variable that compels it to update its underlying logic.
By 2022, compared to the previous phase of technical exploration, Visa's strategic focus clearly shifted towards the construction of settlement paths centered on stablecoins.
First, Visa partnered with Circle to pilot the deployment of USDC as a settlement medium on mainstream chains like Ethereum and Polygon. At the same time, Visa no longer sees stablecoins as speculative assets or payment edges, but formally positions them as 'settlement tools of the digital age'. In 2023, Visa will pilot expansion to Solana, demonstrating the instant settlement process for cross-border transactions using USDC at a developer conference, significantly faster than traditional cross-border settlement systems.
In addition to stablecoins, Visa has also begun exploring new scenarios such as NFT payments, DAO participation mechanisms, and on-chain gas fee credit card automatic payments, attempting to transform itself from a payment network operator into a systemic service provider for the on-chain ecosystem.
The third phase will gradually unfold from 2024, shifting the strategic focus from technical deployment to the reconstruction of global settlement architecture.
Visa accelerated its access to multiple public chain networks such as Solana, Avalanche, and Polygon, and partnered with traditional and emerging payment service providers like Worldpay, Nuvei, and Stripe to promote the application of on-chain payments in traditional merchant channels.
In 2024, Visa launched the Crypto Advisory service, providing integrated solutions covering crypto custody, wallet systems, and stablecoin circulation to bank clients, formally incorporating crypto business into enterprise-level financial infrastructure.
As we enter 2025, Visa's crypto strategy is moving into a substantial implementation phase, with a series of key collaborations and product launches indicating a transition from experimental exploration to systematic deployment.
In April this year, it was reported that Visa joined the USDG stablecoin alliance led by Paxos, collaborating with new financial institutions like Robinhood, Kraken, and Galaxy Digital to build a non-bank-led global settlement network. In this alliance, Visa's role is no longer that of a traditional payment intermediary; instead, it is a key 'backbone router' between on-chain transaction flows and funding settlement paths.
Subsequently, one of the most iconic developments was Visa's partnership with the Middle Eastern fintech platform Rain, fully tokenizing Visa card receivables into USDC to achieve on-chain instant settlement. This means that traditional credit card business has for the first time escaped the constraints of interbank settlement processes, becoming a 'native on-chain payment tool', significantly improving the efficiency and transparency of capital settlement, and laying the foundation for Visa to build a global settlement network operating 24/7.
At the same time, Visa also launched a stablecoin payment card program in the Latin American market, partnering with Bridge to introduce Visa cards linked to USDC in six high-inflation countries such as Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. These cards allow for on-chain balance valuation and consumption, providing users with anti-inflation payment options against the backdrop of severe fluctuations in local currencies, and helping Visa to expand a 'de-intermediated payment scenario' that does not require local bank support.
On the enterprise side, Visa further promoted the 'on-chainization of bank assets' by launching the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP). This platform provides bank clients with one-stop services from stablecoin minting, custody to destruction, supporting them in deploying their own settlement mechanisms into the on-chain system. Several banks, including BBVA, have participated in this plan, with the aim of issuing and circulating their own stablecoins through VTAP, forming a complete closed loop connected to Visa's payment network.
Behind these deployments is a change in the structure of global capital flows. Bitwise data shows that by 2024, the total global stablecoin trading volume has for the first time exceeded Visa's traditional payment processing scale.
Image source: Bitwise Asset Management
Stablecoins have risen from edge assets to mainstream settlement mediums, making it impossible for Visa to maintain its industry dominance through traditional means, and forcing it to redefine its role in the global payment network through on-chain paths. This reality prompts Visa to shift its crypto strategy from peripheral experiments to core business restructuring, also signaling that the global settlement system is entering a new era dominated by stablecoins.
Exploring Crypto, passive defense or proactive transformation?
At a time when the global payment system is still undergoing initial transformation, Visa's changes are not a radical disruption, but a thoughtful role reconstruction. Fundamentally speaking, Visa traditionally plays the role of a credit intermediary between banks: relying on its settlement network, dispute resolution mechanisms, and credit endorsement model, it provides efficient and secure payment channels for hundreds of millions of users and merchants worldwide.
This system was irreplaceable in the Web2 era. However, as we enter the on-chain world, with stablecoins enabling peer-to-peer transfers and around-the-clock settlement, this 'intermediary'-based trust structure is being replaced by the technology itself. The advantages of traditional processes are gradually being weakened, and the value of intermediaries is being reassessed.
The path chosen by Visa is not resistance but proactive integration. Under Cuy Sheffield's leadership, the company has gradually redefined itself as an 'on-chain credit confirmer' and 'payment protocol standard-setter', rather than merely an extension of traditional finance.
Visa collaborates with custody service providers like Anchorage and Fireblocks to ensure its technical deployment capabilities at the on-chain node level; it is also exploring how to incorporate new assets such as CBDCs, NFTs, and DAOs into verifiable payment paths, providing them with Visa-level access standards and risk control support. On the user side, Visa is attempting to integrate stablecoins into its points system, designing reward mechanisms based on on-chain interaction behavior, thereby making on-chain identity and credit real usable assets.
This reconstruction is not limited to mature markets like Europe and the United States. In regions with weak financial infrastructure such as Latin America and Africa, Visa instead enters in a more lightweight manner, bypassing the banking system to directly provide on-chain settlement services between wallet providers and merchants. This is a redefinition of the underlying structure of 'global credit infrastructure': no longer based on bank accounts, but centered around on-chain assets, identities, and settlement paths. In the European and American markets, Visa is assisting traditional banks in entering the stablecoin settlement track through the launch of the VTAP platform and Crypto API, attempting to build a composite financial network made up of banks, merchants, and on-chain assets.
Behind all this is Visa systematically advancing a new credit architecture: not controlling user assets, not storing on-chain data, but constructing a 'trusted settlement path' that covers the globe. This is not blind following of the crypto narrative, nor a complete abandonment of the existing system, but an updated recognition of its own role. Visa is neither SWIFT nor intends to become Coinbase; it is shaping an 'on-chain backbone service provider' that has structural organizational capabilities and technological adaptability.
Visa's uniqueness does not lie in its ability to accommodate crypto, but rather in its attempt to build a new payment track based on stablecoins. It does not provide wallets or custody for user assets, but it continues to play the role of 'on-chain credit confirmer' between 1.5 million merchants and 14,500 institutions worldwide. By coordinating the circulation paths between fiat and stablecoins, Visa has effectively become a de-banked settlement hub.
At this moment as we enter 2025, Visa's stablecoin strategy is no longer about whether to participate, but rather about 'how to dominate'. What Cuy Sheffield is driving is a systematic project focused on institutional adaptation that has lasted for five years — it is not about making Visa a crypto-native company, but about making Visa a coordinator and standard-setter in the on-chain financial order.
Stablecoins are not a challenge to Visa but the direction of Visa's self-evolution. And the role Cuy Sheffield plays is that of an institutional architect in this reconstruction. He is not keen on speculative windfalls nor has he ever shouted slogans for some 'revolutionary technology'. What he is promoting is an updated path starting from the system and processes within the financial system. He knows well that Visa cannot become a crypto-native company, but it can become one of the most organized non-crypto institutions within the on-chain system.
The future of Visa has never been about 'whether to be replaced by crypto', but rather 'how to become part of the crypto world'. The path chosen by this payment giant is neither conservative nor aggressive — it is steadily constructing a completely new financial infrastructure within the structure of time. And this future has quietly begun to unfold.
This article is reprinted with permission from: (BlockBeats)
Original author: shushu
The article 'Visa is building a crypto payment empire! Executives: Stablecoins are the settlement tools of the digital age' was first published in 'Crypto City'
