In October payments giant Visa International Service Association (Visa), a subsidiary of Visa Inc., filed two trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) covering a wide range of crypto products and services. The trademark applications related to digital wallets, non-fungible tokens and the metaverse.
Visa has been active within the crypto space and have partnered with over 65 crypto firms including wallet service provides and exchanges to enable crypto payments using their cards. In December 2021, Visa launched its crypto advisory services and in May 2020 Visa filed a patent application for a fiat-linked crypto system using a private permission DLT platform.
Visa’s recent trademark applications cover:
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
This development by Visa follows other companies who have filed crypto related trademark applications with the USPTO over the past year, including American Express, the New York Stock Exchange, Meta and Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union.
Patent and Trademark filings in the US are often aggressively pursued by businesses in relation to potential projects, and not all filings become final offerings. Time will tell if Visa is truly bringing more crypto-enabled products to their huge customer base globally.