Visa, the payment giant has applied for two trademarks that cover cryptocurrency products and services. These filings include information on crypto transaction management (CTM) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Visa’s New Trademark Applications
Visa filed two trademark applications at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Mike Kondoudis (a USPTO licensed trademark attorney), tweeted Thursday:
Visa has filed 2 trademark applications claiming plans for managing digital, virtual, and cryptocurrency transactions, digital currency + cryptocurrency wallets, NFTs + virtual goods, providing virtual environments … and more.
Filed on Oct. 22, the applications’ serial numbers are 97643605 and 97643607. The trademarks are owned by Visa International Service Association (a subsidiary of Visa Inc.).
An excerpt of one of the trademark applications reads: “online non-downloadable software for management of digital transactions; non-downloadable virtual goods; non-downloadable virtual goods, namely, a collectible series of non-fungible tokens; online non-downloadable software for use as a digital currency wallet and storage services software; online non-downloadable software for use as a cryptocurrency wallet.”
Visa is active in crypto for many years. To enable crypto payments at more than 80 million merchants, Visa has formed partnerships with over 65 crypto companies, which include exchanges as well as wallet service providers.
In January 2021, Visa CEO Alfred Kelly revealed his company’s plan to enable crypto trading on its network. Anticipating crypto becoming “extremely mainstream,” he said Visa is diving into crypto “in a very, very big way.” In December 2021, the payments giant launched crypto advisory services. In May 2020, Visa filed a patent application for a fiat-linked cryptocurrency system using “a private permissioned distributed ledger platform.”
A rising number of businesses have applied for trademarks with the USPTO to protect crypto and its metaverse. Paypal and Western Union both filed trademark applications last week to protect a range of crypto services. Earlier this month, Formula One filed eight trademark applications for “F1” covering many crypto and metaverse products and services. Ford filed 19 similar trademark applications in June. Ebay and Meta from Facebook filed two each in June. Mastercard also filed 15 similar trademark applications in April.
Would you use Visa’s crypto wallet if it’s launched? Please leave your comments below.
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