Payment giant Visa has developed an interoperability concept for CBDC payments.

Payments giant Visa has taken a step toward achieving its vision for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). It has developed a concept that shows how various CBDCs can be interoperable with each other to make payments. The concept, called “Universal Payments Channel” (UPC), outlines how various blockchain networks can be interconnected to allow the transfer of CBDCs. It shows how Visa can help exchange various CBDCs built on different blockchains in the future.

“CBDCs will play an essential role in people’s financial lives in the future.”

“This is a much longer-term future thinking concept around a way that Visa could potentially help become a bridge between one digital currency on one blockchain and another digital currency on another blockchain,” Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, said in an interview with the crypto news outlet The Block. Digital currencies, including CBDCs and stablecoins, will play an essential role in people’s financial lives in the future, according to Visa. For digital currencies to be successful, Visa thinks they must have a great consumer experience and widespread merchant acceptance.

Visa has also deployed its first-ever sample smart contract on Ethereum’s Ropsten testnet.

As part of developing the UPC concept, the payment giant Visa has also deployed its first-ever sample smart contract on Ethereum’s Ropsten testnet. The smart contract shows a payment channel that accepts both ether (ETH) and the USDC stablecoin. “UPC’s specialized payment channels would be established off the blockchain and leverage smart contracts to communicate back with the various blockchain networks, delivering high transaction throughput securely and reliably and improving speeds overall,” said Visa. Sheffield noted that the company is ramping up its knowledge and expertise, learning solidity, and writing smart contracts on Ethereum. It will also explore other blockchains in the future, he added.