Visa has teamed up with First Boulevard, a neobank focused on the Black community, for the first pilot of its new suite of crypto APIs, which will enable customers to purchase, custody and trade digital assets.
The pilot will see First Boulevard connect to infrastructure provided by Visa partner Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell bitcoin.
The test is seen by Visa as a key first step in its effort to help clients access and integrate crypto features via APIs as it seeks to establish itself as a "network-of-networks".
Last week Visa CEO Alfred Kelly said the card scheme is preparing its payments network to handle a full range of cryptocurrency assets and has already struck deals with some 35 organisations in the crypto-markets, such as BitPanda and BlockFi.
Jack Forestell, chief product officer, Visa, says: “We set out to make Visa the bridge between digital currencies and our global network of 70 million merchants and today we are the leading network for crypto wallets with 35 crypto platforms choosing to issue with Visa.
“With this pilot programme, we want to extend the value of Visa to our neobank and financial institution clients by providing an easy bridge to crypto assets and blockchain networks.”