During his 18-year run at Visa driving innovation and strategic partnerships, one of Jim McCarthy’s frustrations was seeing how long it sometimes takes for financial institutions and issuers to embrace new technology.
“New capabilities, such as blocking card fraud with instant alerts, were available much earlier than issuers were ready to roll it out,” said McCarthy, who joined the digital card processor i2c as president
The same thing is happening now with cryptocurrency, McCarthy says.
“We’re seeing the beginning of cryptocurrency’s steady ascent to the mainstream, but a lot of legacy players don’t realize it yet,” he said.
When i2c’s founder and CEO Amir Wain hired McCarthy in the new position of president, the goal was to leverage McCarthy’s contacts with key players in the market to accelerate the company's growth. The timing was significant as i2c is seeing strong growth—and rising competition—from digital card platform rivals including Marqeta and Galileo.
McCarthy is making headway, in part by tapping his deep industry connections at Visa and elsewhere.
In October i2c joined Visa’s Fast Track program as an enablement partner in the U.S., Canada and Europe, which has helped accelerate the company's overtures to cryptocurrency players.
“Visa’s Fast Track program is gaining a lot of momentum with startups, and for us to be an enablement partner gives us direct access to these companies at a critical point in their development,” McCarthy said, noting that i2c offers startups a speedy path to product rollout through its cloud-based, "single-stack" digital card-processing platform.
Several weeks after making its debut as a Visa enabler, i2c announced a series of new product-development deals and partnerships with crypto operators including Apto Payments, Crypto.com, NetCents and
Apto earlier launched the first bitcoin-backed debit card in the U.S.; the Crypto.com Visa card offers a crypto payment card in 31 global markets and NetCents is a leading crypto merchant gateway.
For each of its new partners, i2c offers a secure, customizable platform enabling them to develop programs through any major card network, in all geographies and in nearly every currency, McCarthy said.
“It’s still early stages for cryptocurrency providers, and we’re not close to the point where people are conducting everyday transactions in crypto, but the companies are starting to explore where crypto fits in business models,” he said.
So far, products like Wirex’s cryptocurrency card make it easier for users to convert crypto balances into other currencies for purchases, and merchants are starting to explore ways to eventually accept crypto, McCarthy said.
“What we’re seeing happen with central banks and digital currency is part of a broad movement bringing cryptocurrency closer to the mainstream for everyday use,” he said.
The expansion of contactless payments has also been a focus for i2c during the pandemic.
In November i2c announced a partnership with Purewrist, a startup with offices in San Francisco and New York that’s focusing on contactless wearables connected to Mastercard debit cards.
“We have been extremely busy with many discussions and more to come,” McCarthy said, noting that the company feels a sense of urgency to align i2c with key partners for future products, even though rollouts of many use case are still far in the future.
Competition with other platforms also is a factor in the background, as many emerging companies select their partners.
“We’re an infrastructure provider and there’s certainly a need for us to win the business of the fastest-moving new payment innovators, but there’s also a big runway for growth,” McCarthy said.
