Keep up with Crypto: Cuy Sheffield

Cuy Sheffield guides Visa’s journey into the crypto realm.

Sheffield joined the card network’s merchant partnerships division in 2015 after Visa bought the California-based merchant firm. TrialPay (now known as Visa Commerce Solutions) for an undisclosed sum. He spent four years in this role before being tapped to lead the global crypto product team at Visa in June 2019.

Last September, Sheffield led the expansion of Visa’s stablecoin settlement offerings for merchant buyers, adding settlement support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin at Worldpay and Nuvei. The partnerships use the Solana digital ledger and the Visa account at Circle to send settlement payments in USDC to the two buyers, who then route the payments to merchant customers – all with the goal of improving the speed of cross-border settlements.

“The types of traders that are interested in it today are already in the crypto sector, like a crypto exchange or an NFT market,” Sheffield previously told American Banker. “But as more merchants understand how these new methods work, there may be interest from other types of businesses that find it easier to use a blockchain or stablecoin instead of international wires, Swift and correspondent banks.”

Continuing to meet this demand led Sheffield and his team to conduct research into the development and use cases of various registries. Topics include identifying privacy-enhancing technology, reducing transaction costs through digital ledgers, and more.

Beyond Visa, Sheffield is also co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future of Cryptocurrency Council and a member of the Digital Dollar Project advisory group.