Visa Uses Ethereum Goerli Network

Global payments giant Visa has used Ethereum’s Goerli testnet to try out fees-free payments. On-chain data shows that Visa uses a smart contract called Paymaster. This contract allows the company to leverage account abstraction to perform complex tasks on behalf of accounts and manage transaction costs.

The main purpose of the Paymaster contract is to allow users to pay gas fees with any token without the need to hold Ether in their wallet. In a recent tweet, Visa’s Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield confirmed that the company has implemented its first paymaster smart contract on the Goerli testnet.

As we continue to research and experiment with account abstraction and ERC-4337, I am excited to see Visa implement our first paymaster smart contract on the testnet.

ERC-4337 is an Ethereum standard that performs account abstraction on the protocol without any consensus layer changes and allows users to group and automate transactions on the network.

Visa also acknowledged that the method offers some level of flexibility and can improve the payment experience when transacting in digital currencies.

ERC-4337 opens up interesting future possibilities for enhancing the on-chain user payment experience through a self-protecting smart contract wallet that can transform the way users interact with digital currencies and digital assets.

Visa first announced the account abstraction project on its blog in December 2022. At that time, account abstraction was not yet used on the Ethereum network. Visa’s relationship with Ethereum goes back to 2021, when the company announced that it is processing payments with the USDC stablecoin on the blockchain.