- The company presented this project as part of the LIFT Challenge
- This is an initiative of the Central Bank of Brazil as part of the analysis of the prospects for CBDC
- The Visa platform allows even a tiny enterprise to access blockchain solutions and a pool of investors
Not so long ago, the Central Bank of Brazil announced the finalists of the LIFT Challenge. The task of the participants was to present use cases for CBDC, as well as how the virtual currency interacts with the rest of the economy.
The initiative is part of the regulator’s broader strategy to launch Real Digital. The finalists included nine companies, including Visa.
Together with Microsoft, Agrotoken and Sinqia, the payments giant has unveiled the concept of a programmable financial platform. Visa believes that this project can give impetus to the development of small and medium-sized businesses through the introduction of blockchain solutions.
The key objective of the platform is to bring SMEs, in particular farmers, to the global market. Thus, counterparties will have access to an extensive pool of investors, which will simplify the search for funding sources.
In addition, the platform will also give entrepreneurs access to new tools. Like this, for example, it sees Global Head of CBDC at Visa Katherine Gu:
“In this case, it will allow a farmer who, for example, grows soybeans, sell tokenized “coins” around the world, enter into contracts in the Ethereum ecosystem, use different forms of money.”
Programmable aspects of CBDC are an integral part of this process. They will partially mitigate risks, automate settlements and simplify transactions.
The platform also makes it possible to tokenize traditional financial contracts, such as factoring. In fact, we are talking about an infrastructure that will open access to the blockchain for any enterprise.
The project uses Visa technology called UPC (universal payment channel). This will ensure interoperability and interconnection of the digital realm with other CBDCs.