Kroger formally announced on Friday, on on on on on on on March 1, that its Smith’s Food & Drug stores will no longer accept Visa cards from April 3 due to exorbitant fees that the company slaps on key retailers.
Kroger’s chief financial officer Mike Schlotman explained the decision as follows: “Visa has been misusing its position and charging retailers excessive fees for a long time.”
Shortly after the the the plan was revealed, through Twitter, Pompliano requested Kroger to communicate, stating that that that that that the vendor could utilize the Lightning Network — a payment protocol that operates as a a second layer over a blockchain and allows for faster crypto dealings — rather than Visa.
He tweeted:
“The Morgan Creek Digital team will fly to meet them [Kroger team] and get them hooked up with the Lightning Network nationwide.”
A twitter user with handle @sophicNick, working as a product manager at Kroger Digital, reached out to talk about the details with Pompliano.
Morgan Creek Digital founder revealed that the first interaction has already happened. He also praised the Kroger team stating that the first interaction with the Kroger team was “world-class and forward thinking.”
Regarding the talks Pompliano said “Looks like things are progressing. Stay tuned.”
Just finished up first call with someone on Kroger Digital team.
World-class, forward thinking crew.
Looks like things are progressing.
Stay tuned ??
— Pomp ? (@APompliano) March 3, 2019
As previously reported by Reuters, Smith’s of Kroger’s chains did not begin the trend of discontinuing receiving Visa cards from Kroger’s chains. Supermarkets at Foods Co. in California initially refrained from accepting Visa in August 2018. The two chains together represent nearly 142 supermarkets and 108 fuel center venues across seven US states.
Morgan Creek Capital— an global investment house managing $1.5 billion in assets— is actively studying cryptography and blockchain. For example, in August 2018 in collaboration with Bitwise, Morgan Creek Digital, the institutional manager of digital assets, unveiled the Digital Asset Index Fund.
The fund facilitates certified investors, endowments and pensions the possibility to attain indirect exposure to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and eight more large market cap assets, excluding Ripple (XRP) and Stellar (XLM).
Morgan Creek Digital revealed this February that they have obtained $ 40 million in investor funding, which includes investments by two major pension funds in their latest program, the Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunities Fund.