Visa shares rose nearly 2% in morning trading.Visa Inc. joined its rival Mastercard Inc. in offering central banks a way to test retail applications for digital currencies they might issue.
The card payment provider will begin piloting a program this spring with ConsenSys Inc., a blockchain software company, after discussions with roughly 30 central banks about goals related to government-backed digital currencies.
Visa Inc. is betting on the cloud in a move it says will make the process of enabling card payments easier for small businesses.
The company is broadly launching a platform that moves the "brains" of payment-processing software to the cloud, Visa told MarketWatch. Whereas payment software typically has been embedded in hardware devices, the new program will create a cloud-based alternative that Visa says will allow more devices to accept card-based payments.