Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement Pilot to 9 Blockchains, Reaches $7 Billion Annualized Volume

This article discusses global trends in cryptocurrency payments and stablecoin settlement, primarily observing overseas payment institutions such as Visa, overseas stablecoin payment infrastructure, and related international regulatory frameworks. The content mentioned in this article—including “cryptocurrency payments,” “stablecoin receipts and payments,” and “U Cards”—is not directed at the mainland China market and does not constitute any recommendation for mainland China residents to participate in virtual currency transactions, payments, investments, or related activities. Mainland China has clear regulatory requirements for virtual currency-related businesses; relevant institutions and individuals must strictly comply with existing laws, regulations, and regulatory policies.

Visa has recently added further momentum to the crypto payments industry. On April 29, 2026, Visa announced an expansion of its global stablecoin settlement pilot, adding five new blockchain networks, bringing the total number of supported blockchains in the pilot to nine. At the same time, Visa disclosed that the annualized volume of stablecoin settlements in the pilot has reached $7 billion, a 50% increase from the previous quarter.

The image above is from the VISA website.

Viewing this news merely as “Visa is also getting into stablecoins” misses the point. Visa hasn’t just recently started experimenting with stablecoin payments—it has long been piloting initiatives around USDC, card issuers, acquirers, and on-chain settlement. In January of this year, Reuters reported that Visa was integrating stablecoins into its existing payment infrastructure and had already piloted in the U.S. allowing select banks to settle with Visa using USDC, with the disclosed annualized stablecoin settlement volume at approximately 4.5 billion.

So what’s truly significant here isn’t that Visa has “suddenly embraced stablecoins,” but that it’s consistently doubling down—and not on flashy front-end features, but on the deeper settlement layers of its payment network. This shows that crypto payments are evolving from a Web3-centric product narrative into a serious infrastructure priority for traditional payment giants.

In today’s market, where many Web3 narratives no longer feel exciting, this shift is even more worth a serious look from entrepreneurs and investors.

Many Web3 news stories fade away after a few days. Today it’s a strategic partnership, tomorrow an ecosystem partner, the day after that a technical integration. They all sound big, but in real business terms, nothing may actually happen.

This Visa news is different because it’s not a one-off PR, but a continuation of an ongoing initiative. Visa’s latest addition of supported blockchains includes Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo, joining the previously supported Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar to form a nine-chain stablecoin settlement pilot network.

The signal behind this is clear: Visa is not betting on a single chain or making a one-time experiment, but building a multi-chain settlement network. More importantly, Visa is emphasizing issuer/acquirer settlement—the settlement arrangements between issuing institutions, acquiring institutions, and the Visa network—not “consumers using stablecoins to make purchases.” That’s significant. Front-end payments are often packaged as marketing stories, but back-end settlement cannot be sustained by concepts alone. Questions around reducing costs, improving efficiency, enabling transaction transparency, managing risk, and gaining acceptance from financial institutions are unavoidable.

If a stablecoin remains confined within exchanges, it is merely a liquidity tool in the crypto asset market. But when stablecoins enter the settlement layer of payment networks, they begin to transform into financial infrastructure. This is precisely what makes Visa’s recent move most significant. It’s not just another round of debate over “whether stablecoins can be used for payments,” but rather, mainstream payment networks are answering in their own way: stablecoins can serve as complementary settlement tools within the traditional payment system. This answer carries more weight than any Web3 project’s self-promotion.

There’s a clear shift in the Web3 industry today: many stories are harder to tell. Blockchains are too crowded, DeFi is too mature, NFTs are too cold, GameFi is too speculative, and AI + Crypto often devolves into conceptual patchwork. The era when a single grand narrative, a polished whitepaper, or an ecosystem fund could easily fuel market expectations is no longer as easy to come by as it once was.

But payments are different. Payments are not a story; payments are cash flow.

A foreign trade company receiving payment from an overseas client is not a narrative.

A Web3 company paying its global employees is not a narrative.

For an exchange to implement local deposits and withdrawals, this is not a narrative.

An RWA project must handle investor subscriptions and redemptions — this is not storytelling.

Connecting users' stablecoin balances to real-world spending scenarios is not a narrative.

These are real business requirements that occur daily.

This is why crypto payments are more worth watching today. They may not be the most glamorous, but they are closest to money; they may not be the easiest to spin into a story, but they are easiest to generate revenue; they may not excite the market overnight, but they enable customers to use them every day.

A major challenge for many Web3 projects is: why should users choose you?

But the logic of payment services is more straightforward: if you can make money transfer faster, cheaper, more stable, and more accessible, there is commercial value. This value requires little imagination.

High cross-border payment costs, slow settlement times, lengthy banking chains, uncertainty over weekends and holidays, accounts prone to freezing, and insufficient financial infrastructure in emerging markets—these issues have long persisted. Stablecoins are not a cure-all, but they do offer a new pathway for value transfer.

So, Visa’s continued investment in stablecoin settlements is not an isolated event—it simply makes a growing trend more visible: stablecoin payments are transitioning from a “crypto tool” to a “payment infrastructure.”

Crypto payments are worth doing not because they're new, but because they're practical. This may not sound exciting, but it's important.

Many Web3 startups today are still searching for the "next narrative," but payments don’t need to be invented as a new narrative. Business collections, user payments, merchant settlements, platform revenue sharing, cross-border remittances, stablecoin deposits and withdrawals, and RWA subscriptions and redemptions—all these use cases already exist. Crypto payments simply recombine stablecoins, wallets, on-chain transfers, fiat channels, payment networks, and compliance systems to enable cash flows to operate in a new way.

There are at least three compelling reasons to continue investing in this sector.

The first reason is that the demand is sufficiently real.

Regardless of market conditions, businesses must collect payments, make payments, and settle transactions. Especially in cross-border scenarios, traditional banking systems are not always affordable, fast, stable, or user-friendly. For small and medium-sized enterprises, cross-border e-commerce, Web3 teams, freelancers, overseas service providers, and users in emerging markets, stablecoin payments are no longer an abstract concept—they are a tangible alternative.

The second reason is that stablecoins have already formed a de facto on-chain dollar network.

Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are no longer just pricing tools on exchanges—they are becoming dollar liquidity solutions for numerous on-chain applications, cross-border transactions, capital flows in emerging markets, and Web3 business operations. As long as stablecoins continue to be used, there will be demand for services around payments, exchange, custody, settlement, risk management, and compliance.

The third reason is that big players entering the market won't eliminate entrepreneurial opportunities—they'll help mature the market.

Institutions like Visa, Mastercard, Circle, and Stripe are better suited for underlying networks, clearing standards, large institutional clients, and global partnerships. However, in specific countries, industries, customer segments, and use cases, there is still a strong need for numerous intermediate and application-layer service providers.

Some people build U cards, some handle merchant acquiring, some build enterprise wallets, some operate OTC channels, some manage stablecoin fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, some facilitate cross-border B2B payments, some handle RWA subscription and redemption, some implement on-chain payroll, some build payment APIs, and some operate stablecoin settlement networks.

These directions may appear different, but they all revolve around one core question: how to enable stablecoins to effectively receive, pay, exchange, and settle in the real business world.

The future crypto payment industry is unlikely to be dominated by a single player, but will instead adopt a multi-layered structure: the bottom layer consists of stablecoin issuers, blockchains, and clearing networks; the middle layer includes licensed payment processors, card issuers, acquirers, and liquidity providers; the top layer comprises wallets, merchants, enterprise customers, industry use cases, and user entry points.

Startups don’t have to build at the most fundamental level, but they can go deep in a specific region, customer segment, or use case—such as offering stablecoin payment solutions exclusively for cross-border e-commerce sellers; managing salaries and reimbursements specifically for Web3 companies; handling subscriptions and redemptions for RWA projects; facilitating wallet deposits and withdrawals for exchanges; enabling stablecoin settlements for foreign trade businesses; or providing stablecoin and fiat liquidity management tailored to high-net-worth clients.

These are not merely storytelling businesses. There is room to charge as long as real customer cash flow problems are solved. In today’s phase of overall narrative cooling in the Web3 industry, crypto payments have become one of the few directions with increasing certainty, thanks to genuine demand, major corporate investment, and regulatory integration. Trends may fade, but cash flows will not disappear.

However, crypto payments is not a path that can be sustained long-term through unofficial means. The reason is simple: it involves money. Once money is involved, regulation is inevitable.

Same as "stablecoin payments," some models may merely constitute technical services, while others may already constitute virtual asset services, remittances, currency exchange, merchant acquiring, and even trigger regulation as stored-value payment instruments, electronic money, or payment institutions.

The most typical example is the U card. Many people think the U card is simply “users deposit U and then swipe to spend.” But when you look closer, there are countless issues: Who issues the card? Who holds the users’ stablecoins? Who completes the stablecoin conversion? What is the nature of the user’s balance? What do merchants receive? Who bears responsibility for refunds and chargebacks? Who is responsible for KYC? Which countries’ users cannot be served? Can the app be listed locally?

The same applies to merchant stablecoin payments. If the platform merely provides a plugin, the risks are relatively limited; however, if the platform collects stablecoins on behalf of merchants, aggregates funds, converts them into local fiat currency, and then disburses payments to merchants, it is no longer simply a technical service—it may simultaneously be involved in custody, exchange, payment settlement, and merchant acquiring.

Therefore, increased certainty in crypto payments does not mean lower barriers to entry.

On the contrary, the more certain the赛道, the more serious the regulation; the more giants enter, the harder it becomes for unorthodox players to survive.

If you truly want to enter this space, you can't just focus on products and channels—you must first clarify your business structure: Are you building a wallet, exchange, remittance, payment processing, card issuance, clearing, or custody service? Which part of the funds flow do you control? Which entity signs the user agreement? Which partners hold the licensing obligations? Which countries can you serve, and which must you block? How do you integrate user agreements, risk disclosures, AML policies, and on-chain risk controls into your business processes? These aren’t formalities—they’re core components of your business model.

The biggest fear in crypto payments right now isn’t missing opportunities—it’s seeing the opportunity, building the product, and realizing you’ve been running your business on the wrong structure from day one. Visa’s moves show that the path for stablecoin payments is becoming wider. But a wider road doesn’t mean you can drive with your eyes closed.

If you're also interested in cryptocurrency payments, we recommend attending ManKun's two-day closed-door course in Hangzhou this June. The course goes beyond basic concepts like "What is a stablecoin" and instead dives into real-world scenarios such as U cards, OTC, merchant acquiring, cross-border payments and collections, stablecoin exchanges, wallet services, and targeted marketing—breaking down business models, licensing boundaries, fund flow design, AML risk controls, and protocol arrangements for a complete compliance implementation strategy.

Original author: Attorney Shao Jiaodian