Visa announces a recent partnership with startup Tala. A fintech startup that provides finance-based services in developing markets. The main driving force of Tala is to ease the availability of digital currencies to underbanked customers. Starting with USDC, a dollar-backed stablecoin that is supervised by Consortium. The stable coin supports popular blockchains such as Algorand, Ethereum, Stellar, and Solana. The partnership additionally includes Stellar and Circle.
By this integration with Stellar and Circle, Tala’s consumers can access the stablecoin in Tala’s wallet and utilize functionality like cross-national transfer, crypto to fiat exchange, and support for asset storage. Whereas the collaboration alongside Visa will allow Tala to issue Visa cards associated with the consumer’s digital wallet. In the process empowering consumers by offering them the option to shop at any 70m vendors around the world.
In charge of everything related to crypto at Visa, Cuy Sheffield expressed that Visa has been interested in facilitating consumers who do not have good access to economic services. Last December, Visa collaborated alongside Circle to push USDC incorporation with Visa’s digital wallet network.
The Santa-Monica settled startup has provided more than $2b in credit to customers in the Philippines, India, Mexico, and Kenya. Customers can use the mobile app to obtain loans in a range of $10 – $500, despite having a credit history or not. Paypal Ventures, like GGV Capital, RPS Ventures, and some others, have funded the fintech more than $200m.
According to CEO Shivani, the main objective for Tala is to reduce the price of remittance for its consumers. The CEO created the company after examining the effect of microcredit in West Africa and Sub-Saharan for the United Nations. Latterly, migrant workers have opted for digital currencies to send out remittances as it is much cheaper and faster to MoneyGram and Western Union.
According to the World Bank, in the last quarter of 2020, the average transaction fee percentage for cross-national remittance was close to 6.5%. By comparison, the Latin America-based digital currency platform handles 2.5% to 3% of remittance between the USA and Mexico. In process charging a maximum limit close to 0.65% with no withdrawal or deposit fees. Bitso has announced that it has managed to raise $250m in their section C funding round at a valuation of $2.5b.
The collaboration marks the 1st significant crypto inventiveness by Tala, which has expanded its product line to customers from developing countries. The company has also launched a Tala’s rebuilding fund that provides six-month interest-free loans to essential small businesses. The company has also made medical insurance for Covid-19 accessible at reduced rates in Kenya.