Visa Inc. shares are sliding on Friday to pace Dow Jones Industrial Average laggards — and Mastercard Inc.’s stock is falling as well. The two card networks have dominated the payments landscape, but investors worry about potential new competition ahead.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that various merchants, including Walmart Inc., are looking into whether issuing stablecoins might make sense for them.Stablecoins are a form of cryptocurrency that have values pegged to the dollar or other types of assets. The fear on Wall Street is that merchants will look to bypass traditional financial players as they look to dodge fees.
Visa and Mastercard better adapt or die. Stablecoins will devour their fee revenue. I think another reason why Wall Street is fill up on circle stock. We all can see it. Later the article writer tries to make the case that credit cards will be hard to replace due to rewards but ignores all the issues people have with credit card debt.
Visa and Mastercard can bypass the stablecoin wave and implement lightning and become massive nodes on the BTC network. But I think they are too arrogant to even try to innovate on making payments on an open standard like bitcoin.