In the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency, there’s one constant - the dreaded gas fees. And for Ethereum users, maintaining an Ether balance to cover these costs can be tedious. But what if your trusty Visa card could take care of it? Enter Visa's game-changing innovation!
Visa, the global leader in payment solutions, is in the test phase of a groundbreaking feature: allowing users to pay on-chain gas fees straight from their Visa cards. This could spell the end of regularly checking Ether balances and the complexities that come with varying gas prices.
Mustafa Bedawala, a visionary product manager at Visa, underscored an inherent problem with crypto wallets - the endless juggle of ensuring adequate Ether for gas fees. Traditionally, Ethereum users buy ETH from exchanges and then shift it to their wallets to settle gas prices, a process often plagued with either overspending or an Ether deficit.
Visa's answer to this? Harness the potential of Ethereum’s ERC-4337 standard combined with the “Paymaster” smart contract for off-chain gas fee settlements. Here’s how it works:
- Users initiate an Ethereum transaction via their wallet, directed to Paymaster.
- A web service calculates the gas fee and bills Visa via Cybersource.
- A digital signature is momentarily generated and verified, then appended by the wallet before heading to Ethereum.
- Paymaster checks the signature and foots the gas bill.
The result? A seamless user experience where gas fees are directly paid off-chain with a Visa card, obviating the need to hold ETH just for fees.
But that's not all. Visa's pilot on Ethereum's Goerli testnet, using tools like Stackup’s userop.js library, showcased successful fee settlements via Paymaster, without the middle-man of ETH. This innovation not only simplifies life for blockchain enthusiasts but also paves the way for merchants and decentralized apps to enhance user interactions. It's a vision where Visa-based gas fee payments could be the norm.
