Visa has completed testing for a process that would allow users to pay on-chain gas fees with fiat currency through card payments, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday. Visa believes that blockchain technology has the potential to shape the future of money movement and has seen significant adoption in recent years. However, facilitating transactions on-chain is still complex for the average user.
The cost of sending and receiving ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, and managing the user’s ETH balance to cover these additional costs is burdensome, according to Visa. To make blockchain-based transactions more accessible and user-friendly, Visa suggests leveraging Ethereum’s ERC-4337 and a paymaster contract – a smart contract account that can sponsor gas fees on behalf of the user. This service would allow users to use a Visa card to pay directly for gas fees.
The testing of this process was conducted on the Ethereum Goerli testnet, a testing network for Ethereum. Visa said merchants or decentralized applications (dapps) could run their paymaster solution or existing wallet to make transactions easier. The paymaster service providers could also offer a choice of card-based gas fee payment, among other offerings.
Visa has been exploring different projects in the crypto sector for some time. Most recently, Visa looked into how to convert digital assets into fiat payments earlier this year.
Eliminating this complexity could make blockchain-based transactions more accessible and user-friendly, Visa said in the blog post. When comparing the complex nature of blockchain transactions with the simplicity of fiat-based payment transactions supported by the Visa network, it becomes evident that improvement is needed.