Visa is seeing the cryptocurrency craze dwindling even as customers stepped up use of their crypto-linked cards last quarter

• The cryptocurrency craze is showing signs of slowing, Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu said in a Bloomberg interview.
• Crypto purchases climbed particularly during Q2 but such transactions cooled in June, he said.
• Visa last month said its crypto-enabled cards processed more than $1 billion in total spending during the first half of 2021.

Visa is seeing some cooling of the cryptocurrency frenzy following a boom in crypto-related transactions during the first half of the year, the CFO of the payments company told Bloomberg.

The company's fiscal third-quarter results released Tuesday included a 34% surge in payments volume to $2.7 trillion. Cross-border volume excluding travel and largely for online transactions leapt 56%, with cryptocurrency-related purchases representing most of that acceleration, Visa said, according to a conference call transcript.

"There was quite a big increase in crypto purchases," especially in April and May, Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu told Bloomberg in an interview published Tuesday. "But by June it had begun to fall back."

The pullback in cryptocurrency purchases comes after Visa in June said its crypto-enabled cards during the first half of 2021 processed more than $1 billion in total spending.

Visa also said last month it was partnering with more than 50 cryptocurrency companies to allow clients to spend and convert digital currencies through its card program. Companies it is working with include FTX and Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange operator that went public in April.

The cryptocurrency market jumped to $2 trillion in April, led by a swing up in bitcoin's prices that pushed the value of the world's most traded digital currency above $1 trillion. The company has been recovering after selloffs drove down the crypto market's capitalization to $1.5 trillion as of Wednesday.