Visa this week inked a partnership with First Boulevard, a challenger bank aimed at the Black community, to allow First Boulevard to pilot Visa’s new suite of crypto APIs. The move is the latest in a series of moves from Visa to enable crypto transactions, including a broader effort to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase cryptocurrencies using their Visa credentials, or to cash out onto a Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally.

Why should we care?
The pilot program with Boulevard will allow its customers to purchase, custody, and trade digital assets held by Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank. Visa calls the move a “key first step” in supporting API capabilities that will help additional Visa clients access and integrate crypto features. It represents one component of a bigger digital currency strategy that will help financial institutions that lack their own digital currency infrastructure to use Visa’s platform to tap into crypto assets and blockchain networks. Visa isn’t the only large mainstream payments player to jump on the crypto train: PayPal last October announced capabilities to allow its customers to buy and spend bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies through its platform.