Visa Posts $20 Billion Annualized Stablecoin Settlements After U.S. Launch
Key Facts
Visa’s annualized stablecoin settlement rate surpassed $20 billion, up more than 15-fold year over year, according to an update the company published on 8 September 2026. The figure puts the latest indicators of on-chain settlement activity within Visa’s expansion in the field, following the company’s announcement of U.S. settlement in USDC on 16 December 2025. Visa said at the time that Cross River Bank and Lead Bank had begun settling with it in USDC over the Solana network. The service allows selected issuing and acquiring partners to settle their obligations with VisaNet in the stablecoin rather than relying solely on fiat currencies. The $20 billion figure is an annualized rate based on the pace of settlements, not a statement of transaction volume completed over a full year.
Visa said the settlement model enables faster movement of money and availability seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays, while improving operational flexibility. The institution and Visa settle in USDC, while the company’s digital custody entity converts the stablecoin into fiat currency to pay merchants. According to Visa, the mechanism does not change the cardholder experience. The transaction also appears to the merchant like any other Visa transaction, while blockchain complexities are largely kept out of view. This separation between institutional settlement and merchant payouts allows the new infrastructure to be used without changing how merchants receive funds.
The settlement pace reported in September followed earlier growth cited by Visa in other updates. On 29 April 2026, the company said its pilot supported nine blockchain networks and that the annualized settlement rate had reached $7 billion, up 50% from the previous quarter. In an interview published on 14 January 2026, Visa’s head of crypto said the rate was $4.5 billion annually. The executive compared that with the company’s annual payment volume of $14.2 trillion in 2025, describing stablecoin settlements as a small part of overall activity. These comparisons show the rate Visa reported rising during 2026, while settlements remain a limited share of its total payments.
On stablecoin-linked cards, Visa said the cards processed about $5.2 billion in transactions in 2025, up 319% year over year. That represented 0.04% of Visa’s total global volume of $14.2 trillion in the same year. In an update dated 8 September 2026, the company said the number of stablecoin-linked card programs had exceeded 160 globally in the second quarter of its 2026 fiscal year, and payment volume had risen about 200% year over year. The company had previously said it managed more than 130 programs in more than 50 countries, and expected their number to nearly double during 2026. The figures reflect growing activity across card programs and settlements, with differences in the metrics and periods they cover.
An increase in institutional settlements does not mean stablecoin holders can spend them widely at merchants, Visa’s head of crypto told Reuters in January 2026. He added that connecting these assets to the existing merchant network remains necessary for their use in payments, noting that merchant acceptance has not reached a broad scale. On regulation, Mark Nelsen, Visa’s head of commercial solutions and money movement products, said large institutions had been hesitant before the rules for stablecoins became clear. He was quoted as saying, "The Genius Act changed everything and made it much more legitimate; before the rules were clear, large institutions were hesitant." These comments distinguish the use of stablecoins to settle obligations between institutions from their wider acceptance as a direct payment method.
In the United States, Visa said when announcing the service that it was bringing on selected partners, with broader availability expected during 2026. The December 2025 announcement marked the start of the U.S. effort involving Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, while 2026 updates point to the settlement program’s global expansion. Visa shares closed at $422.16 on 9 November 2026, according to EL7 data. The company had announced a partnership with Aquanow on 17 December 2025 to expand stablecoin settlements in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, saying at the time that monthly volume had exceeded an annualized rate of $2.5 billion. That partnership provides earlier context for settlements expanding beyond the United States, while broader availability for U.S. partners during 2026 remains the next step the company has set out.