Credit card company Visa Inc. has filed for two trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to expand its digital wallet services.
Visa’s filing for trademarks was announced on Twitter by USPTO’s trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis on 27 October. The development comes as many businesses from the traditional payments sector are entering the crypto and Web3 space to cater to the growing demand for digital products.
The two applications filed by Visa for its character mark are to be used in software “to view, access, store, monitor, manage, trade, send, receive, transmit, and exchange” crypto assets and NFTs, which indicates a digital wallet. Besides digital wallet, Visa might also be looking at exploring the metaverse as the company mentioned “virtual environments in which users can interact for recreational, leisure or entertainment purposes” in its filing.
Visa’s foray into crypto
However, Visa’s filing of the trademark is not the company’s first exposure to crypto and Web 3.0. The firm had partnered with crypto firms to offer credit and debit cards tied to crypto payments. In March 2021, Visa said it planned to launch a program to allow its partners to use USD Coins to settle transactions made in fiat. Furthermore, the company also owns a CryptoPunk, a popular NFT collection, signaling the company’s interest in the NFT space. With more than 1 billion Visa cards in circulation, Visa’s foray into digital wallet and metaverse will be a shot in the arm for the Web 3.0 fintech space.
Trademark filing on the rise in 2022
It was reported in August that the number of US trademarks filed for cryptos, NFTs, Web 3.0, and the metaverse this year has surpassed those filed in 2021, according to data compiled by Mike Kondoudis. Visa’s latest trademark applications follow the footsteps of Amex and Mastercard, which filed theirs in March and April, respectively. More recently, financial services firms PayPal Inc. and Western Union filed several new crypto trademark applications with the USPTO to offer a wide range of crypto services.
