PANews reported on September 20 that according to The Block, Cuy Sheffield, head of cryptocurrency at Visa, said in a fireside chat at the Solana Breakpoint event held in Singapore on Friday that stablecoins based on non-US dollar fiat currencies will grow in the next few years. Sheffield said: "The US dollar is very useful in cross-border transactions, but then you need to be able to convert quickly and efficiently, and other local currency stablecoins will play an important role in this regard."
The Visa executive added that while USD stablecoins currently account for 99% of the total stablecoin market supply, every major fiat currency will be represented on the blockchain in the future. Sheffield also said it is "exciting" to see more stablecoins entering the market that try to differentiate themselves from USDT or USDC. Sheffield said: "Right now, in most use cases, people use stablecoins explicitly. They know what stablecoins are and there are some direct-to-consumer brands. But we think there are a lot of other use cases that may only happen on the back end, where the brand doesn't matter, and it's all about economics."
Sheffield said that 2024 can be said to be a turning point, and some non-cryptocurrency businesses are trying to use stablecoins to solve the problem of paying overseas freelancers. Sheffield said: "This is the biggest use case we have seen repeatedly, freelancers in Nigeria and Argentina. They want to get paid and prefer US dollars." Sheffield said that whether stablecoins can become the back-end payment track connecting cross-border and local domestic payment channels is both a problem and a huge opportunity.
