Visa Tests New Solution to Pay Cryptocurrency Gas Fees with Credit or Debit Cards

by Agne Cimerman

Published: August 11, 2023 at 7:47 am Updated: August 11, 2023 at 7:48 am

by Danil Myakin

Edited and fact-checked: August 11, 2023 at 7:47 am

Visa Tests New Solution to Pay Gas Fees with Credit or Debit Cards

Visa has completed a test of a new solution allowing users to pay gas fees with credit or debit cards. Still in development, the solution uses a paymaster contract combined with account abstraction and ERC-4337 to simplify paying gas fees.

Visa’s new solution aims to make it easier and more affordable for users to pay gas fees. By allowing users to pay with credit or debit cards, the solution would eliminate the need for users to have cryptocurrency in their wallets.

Blockchain transactions can be complex and time-consuming, especially for users who are new to the technology. Paying for gas fees on Ethereum is a complicated and costly process that requires users to have ETH. Users have to either buy ETH with fiat or other cryptocurrencies or transfer ETH from an exchange to their wallet, which adds extra steps and exposes users to price fluctuations. Usually, users cannot pay gas fees with stablecoins or other tokens, even if they use them for transactions.

Visa cardholders can use their cards to sponsor gas fees for their Contract Accounts. For example, mint new tokens in a DeFi project and pay gas fees with a Visa card.

Visa handles the complex steps since the solution uses paymasters as key actors to enable user-centric transactions.

visa solution — Visa handles the complexity of cross-border transactions. Source: Visa.com

A paymaster simplifies gas fees and allows users to pay with Visa cards off-chain. The card company built a prototype that uses a Verifying Paymaster, which relies on an off-chain service to validate and fund User Operations. User Operations are blockchain actions that can be executed by a smart contract without a user signature. The off-chain service signs the data with a secret key, and the paymaster contract verifies it with a public key. Account Abstraction lets developers make new flows that reduce friction for any value exchange.

“Our experiment demonstrates that developers can implement this solution with existing payments infrastructure. Merchants or decentralized applications (dApps) could run their own paymaster solution as a means to help improve customer experience by accepting gas fee payments using Visa cards,”
Visa wrote.

Visa has the potential to make blockchain transactions more accessible to a wider range of users and accelerate blockchain adoption.

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About The Author

Agne is a journalist who covers the latest trends and developments in the metaverse, AI, and Web3 industries for the Metaverse Post. Her passion for storytelling has led her to conduct numerous interviews with experts in these fields, always seeking to uncover exciting and engaging stories. Agne holds a Bachelor’s degree in literature and has an extensive background in writing about a wide range of topics including travel, art, and culture. She has also volunteered as an editor for the animal rights organization, where she helped raise awareness about animal welfare issues. Contact her on [email protected].

Agne Cimerman