How Visa Uses TRM to Create a Safer Crypto Ecosystem, One Card at a Time

Visa has long been the trusted leader in digital payment technology. For almost 70 years, they’ve been innovating and setting the standard for payment providers around the world. 

Today, their commitment to connecting individuals, businesses, and economies continues. Visa’s continual innovation, addition of new solutions and capabilities to their legacy offerings, and investment in partnerships and co-branded credit cards with VASPs are helping make crypto even more accessible — and financial freedom even more attainable — for everyone.

The risks and rewards of crypto partnerships

With the rapid adoption of crypto in recent years, Visa recognized an opportunity to partner with VASPs to issue co-branded cards that enable customers to make purchases using digital currencies. However, entering into these kinds of partnerships with organizations in a relatively nascent sector requires extensive due diligence. So Visa turned to TRM Labs’ blockchain intelligence to better understand who these partners would be — and in particular, the level of risk involved in working with them.

Since 2020, Visa has been leveraging TRM’s blockchain intelligence platform to understand the risk profiles of the VASPs the company is considering issuing co-branded credit cards with. This combination of deep on-chain analytics from TRM and off-chain insights from Visa’s other business intelligence resources helps the company make more informed partnership decisions about their crypto card program.

See something, say something

Today, Visa uses TRM to gain a holistic risk profile of any VASP the company is considering issuing a co-branded credit card with — combining deep on-chain analytics with off-chain insights to help Visa proactively understand and protect the organization and its clients from unnecessary risk. 

Specifically, Visa’s crypto transaction monitoring team uses TRM’s Graph Visualizer to identify any transactions they need to query customers about. They also leverage TRM to create custom entities that combine multiple wallet addresses to evaluate the risk scores of customers from whom they’ve requested transaction data. 

On-chain profiles, KYC (Know Your Customer) insights, and associated entities within TRM’s Block Explorer are also critical sources of insight for Visa — and are ultimately incorporated into the holistic risk reports the team uses to make decisions about which VASPs Visa should partner with.

Taking a proactive approach to risk to build stronger partnerships

Visa’s rigorous vetting processes aren’t just important for the company’s own due diligence processes — they’re also a key way Visa builds stronger and more impactful relationships with partners and clients. As one representative noted, “‘Trust is a big word when it comes to our partnerships — not just with VASPs, but with any institution that wants to issue cards. Visa is a trusted brand, accepted globally.” 

By maintaining the company’s rigorous standards of due diligence and approaching emerging technologies like crypto with the same focus on security and resiliency the company has championed since its inception, Visa is helping its customers gain trust and build their own wealth and confidence in digital assets.

Since 2022, Visa has screened an estimated 200+ individual VASPs to determine their viability as crypto card partners — a process that would have been practically impossible without TRM’s blockchain intelligence. A Visa representative explained, “We like partnering with TRM because TRM allows us to really understand the risk of the entity we're trying to co-brand with . . . If we didn't have TRM by our side, it would take a lot of manual effort on our end to capture the information that’s readily available within TRM itself, in terms of the off-chain profile and tracking down blockchain data.”

Empowering clients with even more ways to pay

Visa is helping to shape the future of payments by partnering with a new generation of businesses — crypto businesses and VASPs — and empowering consumers with an ever-growing array of choices in how they pay for things.

With actionable and proactive insights from TRM’s blockchain intelligence platform, Visa can continue to innovate while mitigating risk against bad actors, instilling businesses and individuals with confidence in crypto, and carrying on the company's 70+ year legacy of industry-leading operational excellence and consumer trust.