Visa Raises Crypto Ambitions With Job Ad for Web3 Developer

The global payments firm is hiring an engineer familiar with Ethereum.

Visa in a shop. Remember shops? Image: Shutterstock.

Payments giant Visa is pushing ahead with its Web3 plans, with the company hoping to hire a senior software developer for its crypto team.

In a job listing posted last week, the world’s second-largest card payment organization said it was looking for “experienced software engineers” who are “passionate about the Web3 stack of technologies.”

Web3 refers to the next large-scale evolution of the internet, built on blockchains, which can give users more control of their data. Visa says it has been focusing on building products for this space for some time.

“The Visa Crypto Team is building the next generation of products to facilitate commerce in everyone’s digital and mobile lives,” the post said. “Our focus is to build intuitive features that expose profound new value for our customers.”

The job listing, for a London-based engineer, asks for someone who can “understand the new Ethereum enhancements,” and specifically mentions ERC-4337, a standard for releasing tokens on the blockchain. Ethereum is the blockchain behind the second biggest cryptocurrency, ETH.

Visa last year said released a paper hinting at how it could one day collaborate with the Ethereum network on automatic payments.

The firm also asks for someone familiar with “security protocols” and “private key custody.”

Visa appeared to pull back on its crypto activity after exchange and crypto brand FTX went bust in November. The company had plans to roll out crypto debit cards to 40 new countries as part of a “long-term global partnership” with FTX but stopped when FTX failed.

In February, Visa said that “despite the challenges and uncertainty in the crypto ecosystem,” it still believes that “fiat backed digital currencies running on public blockchains have the potential to play an important role in the payments ecosystem.”

The company last year also filed new trademark applications that hinted at potential plans for a crypto wallet and a metaverse product.

But a Visa spokesperson told Decrypt in February that the firm “recent high-profile failures in the crypto sector are an important reminder that we have a long way to go before crypto becomes a part of mainstream payments and financial services.”

By Mat Di Salvo | Original Link