Visa doubles down on crypto business unit with five strategic hires and placements

Chain Debrief
July 1, 2021
2 mins read

One of the biggest payment gateway in the world, VISA, has just shared that they have made several key hires to beef up their cryptocurrency team. The announcement was made by Cuy Sheffield, VISA’s head of crypto on his twitter account.

1/ I'm excited to share some updates on the Visa Crypto business unit and our areas of focus as we continue to grow the team and build the future of crypto and payments.

First, some amazing new hires!
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) June 29, 2021

3/ As we continue to expand our focus on social impact, @carle_catherine joined @BrittanyKayEden's team in a new role focused on fintech and crypto community initiatives where Visa can improve on-ramps, access, and education for underserved communities and entrepreneurs
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) June 29, 2021

5/ @daniel_mottice joined our product team focused on crypto money movement including our USDC settlement capabilities and opportunities for stablecoins to improve cross border payouts https://t.co/5JHl9eN05w
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) June 29, 2021

7/ @catgu_ continues to lead our central bank digital currency initiatives, collaborating with @mahdi_zamani_ , @christodorescu, @vranjit on technical research and thought leadership like offline paymentshttps://t.co/hmH6jOxFd6
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) June 29, 2021

9/ I'm incredibly grateful to work with such an amazing team and have the opportunity to leverage the power of Visa to help advance the adoption and utility of Bitcoin, stablecoins, NFTs, DeFi, and public blockchain networks
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) June 29, 2021

According to Cuy, here are the key hires and their roles:

Name of new hire	Previous Role	New Role in Visa
Chike Ukaegbu	Founder of New York-based tech accelerator Startup52	Head of crypto strategy for emerging markets
Catherine Carle	University of St. Thomas in Minnesota healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship	Crypto social impact and community partnerships
Anuj Bathla	Visa Senior Director, Product Commercialization and GTM	Visa Global crypto GTM lead
Daniel Mottice	Visa Direct product manager	Visa crypto product manager focusing on digital currency settlement capabilities
Alex Chiang	Associate at Visa	Visa crypto product manager focusing on adoption of NFTs in e-commerce

Visa plans to expand its crypto team even further. Cuy also tweeted that the company has job openings for product management, business development and engineering roles.

Earlier in March this year, Visa announced that it will allow the use of stablecoin USDC to settle transactions on its payment network, the latest sign of growing acceptance of digital currencies by the mainstream financial industry.

With the new hires, it is clear that Visa will continue to be involved in the cryptocurrency space, and we expect to hear more development from Visa especially with regards to digital currency settlement for its clients and partners, as well as in e-commerce NFTs.

Also Read: How the biggest banks in the United States are involved with cryptocurrency