Interview with Alexandra Soroko, Growth Partnerships & Senior Director at VISA | EBC11

Transcript

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. We are here at the European Blockchain Convention 11 Barcelona. Uh I'm Alona, co-founder of Rebel PR Agency and I'm sitting with Alexandra Sorokco uh growth partnership at Visa. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you too. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us. Yes, it was a pleasure. Great event. Thank you. Right. So, um, you've been here for 2 days. What is like your first, uh, uh, initial response or or reaction to the event. What have you seen that, you know, found you? Yeah, I think I think what I liked, it's specialized. So, I'm going to broader events. And so, what I like here, it's specialized. It's not too big. So, it's a human size. So, you can actually go through the booth, speak

to people. Uh, I think the content was well created. Uh, was interesting to listen. Uh I'm actually a big fan of uh this kind of events because I think the AOI is huge as in two days you condense maybe several weeks of calls uh meetings etc and you get to the content into the news which you cannot get reading uh and you can also validate what you know and validate your ideas with the fellow professionals uh and share what you know as well so I think it's very rich uh as event as a concept so it was good >> absolutely Absolutely. So you have a very interesting position uh being uh partnerships and growth in visa because you get you know to experience the

traditional finance uh from one side and the startup and innovation of web 3 from that side. Um how do you see those worlds kind of like meshing? Where do you think are the most interesting things of the you know the junction that you get to see every day? Yes, of course. and and and it's true like Visa is uh specifically well positioned uh uh in this momentum of uh of growth of uh onchain onchain finance and if we take a step back so our strategy and our vision was always to connect the world through most uh secure reliable and convenient uh payment network and the philosophy that we have for years is that we are a network of networks. So that means new networks appear um and the way how we think is how do we integrate new

networks and new rails uh to serve our clients businesses uh consumers financial institutions. So that's the mindset that we have across like 60 years of our existence. Um and today when I see like the growth and especially the scale that uh uh on uh onain blockchain and crypto is getting that year uh we're actually positioning ourselves in in this bridge to how to connect the new onchain world and with the with traditional rails and traditional fiat uh rails uh and that's that's what Visa is doing and uh we have different initiatives behind that uh and uh most importantly the cards of course and which is a tool and remains the tool to on ramp and and and and off from so

using the card to get money on chain and of course it's possible to for many years now to issue a card to a digital wallet and spend the civilian way and I think it's really brilliant because uh the merchant side doesn't don't need to change anything and Visa card is accepted in more than 150 million locations across the world so that's one of the big big thing that we continue doing but of course uh so this is the front end so the user experience but we also do um do integrate stable coins on the back end on our network. Uh as an example, we uh did do the pilots for stable coin settlement. So our clients uh visa members uh can uh settle their obligations with visa in uh stable

points which brings for example the settlement possible not just 5 days a week but seven days a week uh which is obviously bringing the um leveraging on on those features of being uh 24 by7 available of the stable points. We also uh start piloting the refunding solutions so the collateral can be uh put in stable coins and we also go forward in uh launching our onchain uh products as well. >> That's very exciting. Uh so when you you know uh scout and talk to new web pre projects and trying to bring them into your ecosystem, what is it that you're looking for? What is Visa currently you know uh uh pursuing right now? I think we we we're working uh we basically the

way we set up is as a network. So we work with different existing and new uh players coming to financial and payment ecosystem. And this is how we think we think how to serve the existing large bank banks tier one banks but also the fintexs coming. there was a fintech wave like yes five seven 10 years ago and we were adapting the way how we're working to that wave and now it's the same but the we started with web three companies like five six years ago to issue the visa cards um and so so now we're I think what happens today is the web three players they're looking how to bring their services in a fiat world so companies SMB companies not just retail like yeah the clients can start serving and benefit from what the stable parts

for example can bring so there's one week and the other side is traditional financial institutions looking how to start offering onchain products can be crypto it can be trading it can be uh settlement products different uh it can be custo custodian products so I think we will see those kind of uh coexistence of of two worlds but both sides will try to kind of uh make evolving their products and I think it will be super important to stay relevant >> very interesting I mean visa like you said really has led innovation in that sense with the fintech and with crypto.

Um, what do you see uh as the next big thing? You know, you mentioned cards. What's going to happen in 2026? How do you see the mass adoption and the users and merchants kind of like uh joining in the the crypto wagon? I think the the three big things will be important for next year that what I was saying also on the panel yesterday. Uh interoperability will be a big question. um because there will be more stable points, there will be more chains and we will have a coexistence of those of that world. So there will be uh uh definitely uh definitely this orchestration interferability. Then um abstraction and UIX. So how to make uh the use of uh onchain products and

stable points and that it's simple. it is not still neither for retail users and neither for for coboard users. So how to get gain scale uh and border adoption via simplicity and abstraction. Uh and the third part is also we're talking a lot about the payments uh stable coins as a tool of payments but it's also thanks to the programmability and the smart contracts it's also path to a new lending and credit instruments and so I think it's maybe will be more 2027 because first we need to have a rail and a better adoption broad adoption and recognition and creation of a trust uh uh the the concept of programmability and and smart contracts

in a broader scale u But that's like interferability, attraction and UIX and uh programmability with different new lending party products. Very interesting. Thank you so much for your insight. Was great to hear from you. Talk to you. Thank you. Thank you so much.