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Keeping up to date with Crypto: Cuy Sheffield
Cuy Sheffield, Vice President and Head of Crypto, Visa
Cuy Sheffield is leading Visa’s journey into the cryptocurrency realm.
Sheffield joined the card network’s merchant partnership division in 2015, after Visa purchased the California-based merchant company Trial payment (now known as Visa Commerce Solutions) for an undisclosed amount. He spent four years in that role before being tapped to lead the global crypto products team at Visa in June 2019.
Last September, Sheffield led the expansion of Visa’s stablecoin settlement offerings for commercial acquirers by adding settlement support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin at Worldpay and Nuvei. The partnerships leverage Solana’s digital ledger and Visa’s account with Circle to send USDC settlement payments to the two acquirers, who then route the payments to merchant customers, all with the goal of improving the speed of cross-border settlements.
“The types of merchants that are interested today are already in the cryptocurrency space, like a crypto exchange or an NFT marketplace,” Sheffield previously told American Banker. “But as more merchants understand how these new methods work, there may be interest from other types of companies who may find it easier to use a blockchain or stablecoin instead of international wires, Swift, and correspondent banking.”
Continuing to meet this demand pushed Sheffield and his team to conduct research into the development and use cases of various registries. Topics include identifying privacy-enhancing technologies, reducing transaction costs through digital ledgers, and more.
In addition to Visa, Sheffield is also co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies and a member of the advisory group for the Digital Dollar Project.