(Bloomberg) -- Worldpay Inc. plans to participate directly in the process of verifying blockchain transactions for the first time, an effort to better understand how digital ledgers operate.
The payments provider, which supports over 1 million merchants globally, is in discussions with select blockchains to become a validator, said Sanchit Mall, the web3 and crypto lead for Worldpay in the Asia-Pacific region.
“The idea is to be part of the ecosystem right at the base,” Mall said in an interview, adding that Worldpay intends to be involved with blockchain infrastructure as money moves across digital ledgers in future.
Validators are network participants that maintain the integrity of digital ledgers. They have to acquire and sequester some of a blockchain’s native cryptocurrency — an activity called staking — as a kind of surety for their work. They receive fees in return for monitoring and verifying transactions.
So far this year the Ohio-based firm has processed $1.3 billion worth of payments using stablecoins, up from less than $1 billion in 2023, Mall said.
That’s a tiny sliver of the more than $2.3 trillion in payments Worldpay facilitates annually. The jury remains out on whether stablecoins — a type of token intended to hold a constant value — or volatile cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will ever grab a significant share of the global payments sector.
Worldpay is owned by private equity firm GTCR LLC and Fidelity National Information Services Inc.
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