Visa’s stablecoin pilot hits $7B run rate across nine chains

Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains and announced an annualized settlement run rate of $7 billion, a 50% increase from the prior quarter. The company added Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo to its existing support for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar. The announcement was made Wednesday.

Visa described the expansion as part of an effort to standardize settlement across multiple blockchain networks while maintaining a single infrastructure layer for partners. The pilot program has operated for several years in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The company recently extended USDC settlement to U.S. banks and now supports more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in over 50 countries.

Visa did not break out transaction volumes by blockchain. The $7 billion figure aggregates settlement activity across the nine supported networks and reflects settlement in markets with different regulatory and regional rules.

Visa announced a partnership with on-chain banking firm WeFi to enable crypto payments using infrastructure that allows consumers to retain control of their crypto assets. The collaboration is intended to support different settlement flows and custody models while offering partners a consistent settlement layer.

Analysts at William Blair reaffirmed an outperform rating on Visa. In a client note, the team led by Andrew Jeffrey described stablecoin-based B2B settlement as a small but expanding component of Visa’s payments network and pointed to the company’s involvement in emerging payment architectures and interoperability initiatives tied to digital currency frameworks in Europe. The analysts also flagged potential regulatory overhang related to development of digital euro infrastructure and noted Visa is developing interoperability tools to connect central bank digital currency systems with existing payment rails.

Visa began piloting stablecoin settlement in recent years to provide an alternative clearing mechanism for cross-border and B2B transactions. The program emphasizes fiat-pegged stablecoins as a settlement instrument and has added network support to meet partner demand for faster, lower-cost settlement and cross-chain interoperability.