April 30 (Reuters) - Visa and stablecoin

infrastructure provider startup Bridge are partnering to offer

stablecoin-linked Visa cards to customers across multiple

countries in Latin America, which the companies say will allow

users to make everyday purchases in cryptocurrency tokens.

The move comes as the U.S. Congress appears likely to pass a

bill creating stablecoin rules for the first time, which experts

say could pave the way for more financial firms to use or issue

their own stablecoins.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a

constant value, usually a 1:1 dollar peg, are commonly used by

crypto traders to move funds between tokens. Proponents say that

they could be used to send payments instantly, but it remains

challenging to use stablecoins for everyday purchases because

merchants typically don't accept payments in crypto.

Bridge - which was acquired by Stripe earlier this year -

will work on the back-end of transactions that customers make

with their linked Visa cards to deduct funds from a user's

stablecoin balance and then will convert the payment into the

local currency for merchants.

CONTEXT

Through the partnership with Visa, developers building

products on Bridge will be able to add stablecoin-linked Visa

cards to their slate of offerings.

Users will be able to use the stablecoin-linked cards at any

merchants that accept Visa in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador,

Mexico, Peru and Chile. Bridge and Visa say that the product

will become available in Europe, Africa and Asia in the coming

months.

KEY QUOTES

"We feel like the moment is now to take some of the things

that we've already been doing in a more experimental, pilot

basis and start to expose them to the world as capabilities that

we anticipate will really start to become big and meaningful and

globally scalable," said Jack Forestell, chief product and

strategy officer at Visa.

For consumers to use stablecoins at a large-scale, they will

have to be interoperable with existing tools and services that

customers and businesses are accustomed to, said Zach Abrams,

CEO of Bridge.

"This enables folks to use and take advantage of the

benefits of stablecoins wherever they are in the world, but

remain wholly connected with the financial tools that folks

use," he said.