Payment giant Visa announced on Thursday that it will launch a Web3 loyalty service, which includes gamified rewards and immersive treasure hunt activities. The customer engagement platform, called the Visa Web3 Loyalty Participation Solution, will allow brands to create digital wallets to store reward points and experiences on behalf of consumers.

Visa, along with HSBC and Hang Seng Bank, has completed the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's CBDC Pilot Programme. The programme involved tokenization of deposits, allowing for near real-time interbank transfers and 24/7 functionality. The tokenized deposits were transacted through encryption, ensuring privacy for participants. Visa is now exploring tokenized asset markets and programmable finance, with the e-HKD Pilot Programme entering phase two.

On November 1st, VISA officially announced the pilot test results of tokenized deposits using central bank digital currency in collaboration with HSBC and Hang Seng Bank. The test focused on simulating two use cases in the interbank enterprise-to-enterprise (B2B) payment process, including property payments and settlements between payment institutions and merchants.

Fiat24 initiated a temperature check vote on the Uniswap governance platform to "issue a Visa debit card with the Uniswap logo". The proposal states that: Fiat24 is a regulated and licensed Swiss bank operating on Arbitrum. Fiat24 has abandoned servers and relies entirely on smart contracts to handle all banking operations. Fiat24 acts as a legal currency layer in decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap. Customers can not only recharge their Swiss bank accounts through international remittances but also through the sale of cryptocurrencies. To ensure seamless integration with the blockchain ecosystem, all cryptocurrency tokens need to be converted into stablecoins through Uniswap before reaching the Fiat24 vault, establishing Uniswap as its main liquidity provider. Fiat24 proposes to cooperate with Uniswap to launch a joint Visa card to strengthen this bridge and expand its services to Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

October 21st, according to official sources, Binance will stop providing its Visa card services in the European Economic Area. Users who hold the card can continue to use it until December 20th. If feasible, users can consider using Binance Pay to shop with cryptocurrencies at merchants who accept them.

Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs executive, has named Solana (SOL) as one of his top altcoin picks and believes it could be the most promising project outside of Ethereum (ETH). Pal praises Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko for his thought leadership and ability to build bridges within the crypto space.

Visa has released a research report titled "In-Depth Exploration of High-Performance Blockchain Network Solana". The report points out Solana's unique technological advantages, including high throughput with parallel processing, low-cost localization fee market, and high elasticity with a large number of nodes and multi-node clients, which together create a scalable blockchain platform with a notable payment value proposition.

Cuy Sheffield, head of Visa's blockchain, said in a blog post on Wednesday that despite various flaws and issues, blockchain technology is similar to the early days of the Internet and is developing from obscurity to ubiquity. Sheffield believes that blockchain technology - in terms of efficiency, related costs, and usability - may mature in the next decade.

Lightning Koffee, a start-up founded by José Luis Garcia in Medellín, Colombia, is promoting Bitcoin adoption through its locally sourced and processed coffee beans, known as "The Bitcoiners Coffee." The aim is to encourage locals to move away from the unpredictable Colombian peso and towards Bitcoin. While Lightning Koffee currently only accepts cryptocurrencies, Garcia plans to start accepting fiat payments through Mastercard and Visa, but will only accept Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency.

Binance is reducing its card partnerships, as Mastercard terminates its collaboration and the crypto exchange temporarily halts new applications for its Visa-supported European card. The card pilot programs with Mastercard in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Bahrain will end on September 22, affecting only a small portion of users. Binance's co-branded card with Visa has also paused new applications for the EEA since July, but existing cardholders can continue to use and reorder their cards. <br>