Visa's Stablecoin Settlement Annual Volume Exceeds $20 Billion
Visa's stablecoin settlement business has surpassed an annual processing scale of $20 billion, a 15-fold year-on-year increase, marking one of the fastest expansions by traditional payment giants in the stablecoin settlement sector.
Since 2021, Visa has partnered with Circle to pilot USDC for merchant fund settlements on the Ethereum network, and in 2023, it further expanded to the Solana network, aiming to replace traditional bank wire transfers and ACH clearing processes with stablecoins, reducing the cross-border fund arrival period from several days to nearly real-time.
Institutions connected to this settlement network include Worldpay, one of the largest acquirers globally, and the crypto payment platform Crypto.com, both of which have utilized Visa's stablecoin-based settlement track to meet cross-border fund clearing needs for merchants.
Visa has continued to expand this capability, evolving from a single network and stablecoin to supporting multiple public chains and various stablecoin assets, extending its service scope from North America to emerging markets in Latin America, where bank clearing efficiency is lower and local currency volatility is higher.
The core advantage of stablecoin settlement over traditional wire transfers lies in bypassing multiple intermediaries and counterparty risks in the interbank settlement network, allowing funds to be confirmed directly on-chain, theoretically enabling 24/7 uninterrupted clearing, contrasting sharply with the bank system's reliance on weekday settlement windows.
From a funding flow perspective, this scale leap reflects the genuine demand from B-end merchants and acquirers for on-chain settlement efficiency, rather than being driven by speculative funds; beneficiaries include institutions issuing stablecoins (like Circle) and public chain networks providing on-chain infrastructure, while traditional agency settlement systems and banks relying on cross-border wire transfer spreads face pressure to be replaced.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Visa's strategy in stablecoin settlement follows a clear path: partnering with Circle to pilot USDC settlement on Ethereum in 2021, expanding to the Solana network in 2023, and commercial collaborations with Worldpay and Crypto.com, subsequently broadening settlement capabilities to more blockchains and stablecoin categories. This directly competes with Mastercard's simultaneous push for crypto cards and on-chain settlement products.
In terms of capital strategy, Visa has not directly issued or held stablecoins but has layered an on-chain settlement channel over its existing global acquiring clearing network, allowing merchants and acquirers to choose stablecoins like USDC for fund clearing—essentially gaining entry into emerging settlement tracks with minimal capital investment while avoiding additional regulatory responsibilities in currency issuance.
This "accessing infrastructure rather than issuing its own coin" approach contrasts with PayPal's launch of its own stablecoin PYUSD in 2023 and Stripe's acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge in the same year—traditional payment giants have chosen different strategies of issuing coins, mergers, and access to seize the same track. Visa is currently transitioning from early pilots to commercial-scale implementation, marking the mid-stage of the industry's "settlement track infrastructure competition."
Structurally, this represents a transfer of pricing power: in the traditional cross-border settlement system, bank agency networks have long held pricing power due to time differences in clearing and multi-layer intermediary fees, while stablecoin settlement bypasses this system through on-chain instant confirmation, shifting the pricing power of cross-border fund clearing from bank agency networks to stablecoin issuers and public chain infrastructure providers, with the mechanism's core being that the transparency of settlement speed and costs undermines the necessity of traditional intermediaries.
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