Visa CFO: Digital Currency Excitement May Be Slowing Down

This year has seen exceptional growth in the digital asset markets, with attractive knock-on effects for 3rd parties like Visa. Nevertheless, this may already be starting to diminish, as per Visa’s company’s senior executives.

The company’s recently released financial results for fiscal Q3 2021 show bullish figures for cross-border and overseas transactions, which is an important metric for analysts on the lookout for early signals of Covid-19 recovery.

Earlier this month, the company divulged that its virtual currency-enabled cards had processed over a billion dollars in total spending for H1 2021, registering an impact on overseas volume as digital asset users deposited funds into virtual currency platforms across several jurisdictions. These effects are still visible in the firm’s latest results for Quarter 3, with the report hinting that,

“Cross-border volume excluding transactions within Europe, which drive our international transaction revenues, increased 53% on a constant-dollar basis for the three months ended June 30, 2021. Total cross-border volume on a constant-dollar basis increased 47% in the quarter.”

Nonetheless, in a recent interview, Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu mentioned that much of the digital asset-driven momentum behind higher cross-border spending was in fact restricted to the initial 2 months of the quarter.

Emphasizing the rapid surge in digital asset purchases in the months of April and May, Prabhu noted that it had started to fall back by June. Given the indecisive return to international travel, Prabhu cautioned that the cross-border volume could be poised to drop without being buoyed up by a booming virtual asset market.