Visa disclosed on October 27 that its stablecoin settlement run rate surpassed $25 billion in annualized volume during fiscal Q4 2026, a tenfold increase year-over-year. The figure was reported during the company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, alongside full-year net revenue of $45.9 bill...
"We are stablecoin-agnostic. We are blockchain-agnostic. We serve a vast array of clients with different preferences and different needs around the world." — Ryan McInerney, CEO, Visa Inc.
Visa disclosed on October 27 that its stablecoin settlement run rate surpassed $25 billion in annualized volume during fiscal Q4 2026, a tenfold increase year-over-year. The figure was reported during the company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, alongside full-year net revenue of $45.9 billion (up 15%) and 281 billion processed transactions.
Mastercard, which completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK in August, now processes approximately $30 billion in annualized stablecoin payment volume across 130 markets. Combined, the two largest card networks are running at roughly $55 billion in annualized stablecoin settlement — volume that did not exist at meaningful scale two years ago.
The figures mark a structural shift. Stablecoin settlement is no longer a peripheral experiment for either network. It is being embedded into core settlement infrastructure, cross-border money movement, and card issuance programs spanning more than 100 countries.
Visa's stablecoin settlement trajectory follows a defined progression. The company first settled in USDC on Ethereum through a pilot with Crypto.com in March 2021. It added Solana and merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei in 2023. In December 2025, Visa launched domestic U.S. stablecoin settlement with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank as initial participants, settling obligations using USDC on Solana.
By late 2025, the program had reached $3.5 billion in annualized settlement volume. By April 2026, that figure had grown to $7 billion — a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase. The Q4 FY2026 disclosure of a $25 billion run rate represents a further acceleration, roughly 3.6x the April figure in six months.
The infrastructure has expanded in parallel. Visa now supports 10 blockchain networks, up from approximately four at the start of the fiscal year, and five stablecoins for settlement across all five of its operating regions. CEO Ryan McInerney stated on the earnings call that the company is "stablecoin-agnostic" and "blockchain-agnostic," having started with USDC but planning to activate additional stablecoins.
Visa Direct, the company's real-time push payments network, has moved stablecoin prefunding and cross-border money movement from pilot to commercial production. Ingo Global, a U.S.-based payments infrastructure provider, is the first live partner. The Visa Stablecoin Platform is now operational in the U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Switzerland, and the U.K., with more than 300 partners in the pipeline.
These stablecoin operations sit within a broader business that recorded $45.9 billion in full-year net revenue, $23.5 billion in GAAP net income, and 5.2 billion credentials worldwide. Stablecoin settlement volume at $25 billion annualized represents approximately 0.15% of Visa's approximately $16.6 trillion in total annual payment volume — small in proportional terms, but growing at 10x year-over-year versus single-digit growth for the core network.
Mastercard took a different path. Rather than building stablecoin settlement incrementally through bank partnerships, the company acquired BVNK Holdings Limited for $1.5 billion in base consideration plus $300 million in contingent earnout, totaling up to $1.8 billion. The deal closed on August 3, 2026.
BVNK brought immediate operational access to a platform processing roughly $30 billion in annualized stablecoin payment volume across 130 markets. The acquisition included 25-plus regulatory licenses, including MiCA authorization obtained in February 2026 and direct access to SEPA euro payment rails. BVNK's client roster included enterprise names such as Worldpay, Deel, Rapyd, Flywire, and — notably — Visa Direct.
The acquisition was contested. According to reporting by S&P Global Market Intelligence, Coinbase and Mastercard competed in a $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion range. Coinbase briefly secured exclusivity in October 2025, but that deal collapsed, and Mastercard entered a definitive agreement in March 2026.
Following the close, Mastercard integrated BVNK to launch the Global Money Platform, which supports settlement in USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD. The company announced intraday and weekend settlement cycles in June 2026. Mastercard has also added stablecoin wallet payouts through a partnership with Thunes and brought USDC and EURC settlement to acquirers in its EEMEA region.
The BVNK acquisition made Mastercard the first major publicly listed payment network to buy — rather than build or partner — its way into proprietary stablecoin infrastructure. The bet is that stablecoin plumbing is a competitive moat, not a commoditized utility.
The settlement layer feeds a consumer-facing distribution channel: stablecoin-linked card programs. Visa reported more than 225 such programs, a 70% year-over-year increase, serving approximately 5 million active cards across more than 50 countries. Transaction volume on these cards increased 150% year-over-year.
On the issuing side, Visa and Bridge — the stablecoin infrastructure firm acquired by Stripe in 2024 — announced plans to expand their jointly issued stablecoin-linked card program from 18 markets to more than 100 countries by the end of 2026. The product launched initially in Latin America (Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Chile) and is expanding to Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. The program allows fintech firms and wallet providers to offer cards that let users spend stablecoin balances at any of Visa's 175 million merchant locations worldwide.
Approximately $1.2 billion moved through stablecoin-linked cards in September 2026 alone, about three times the figure from September 2025. Cumulative spending on crypto payment cards linked to stablecoins exceeded $3.9 billion by the end of Q3 2026.
Visa's network carries more than 90% of crypto card transactions by volume, according to insights4vc, owing to early alignment with crypto-native issuers. Mastercard has responded through its Crypto Credential standards, BVNK integration, and direct settlement capabilities.
A parallel development is OpenUSD (OUSD), a stablecoin launched on September 30, 2026, by the Open Standard consortium. Founding members include Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe, and Visa.
OUSD crossed $800 million in total supply within its first month, reaching approximately $828 million by October 28, according to DefiLlama data. The token launched simultaneously on four blockchains: Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Tempo (supported by Stripe). Approximately 64% of supply sits on Tempo.
The stablecoin carries no minting or redemption fees, with reserves held by major financial institutions. Visa's McInerney stated on the Q4 call that the company plans to integrate OUSD into settlement and Visa Direct products.
The consortium model is notable because it aligns competitors — Visa and Mastercard — behind a shared stablecoin standard, while each maintains proprietary settlement infrastructure. The arrangement suggests that competition is moving from the stablecoin issuance layer to the settlement and distribution layers.
The broader stablecoin market provides context for the card networks' expansion. The total stablecoin market capitalization reached $300.9 billion as of October 1, 2026, according to the RWA Foundation. Tether (USDT) leads with approximately $182 billion, Circle (USDC) holds $72 billion, and the remaining supply is distributed across dozens of smaller issuers.
In the first three quarters of 2026, global stablecoin settlement volume in payment applications reached $482 billion, a 45% year-over-year increase, with payment transactions surpassing 1 billion (up 71% year-over-year). Monthly stablecoin transfer volume on-chain averaged $3.8 trillion in Q1 2026, though "organic" adjusted volume is estimated at roughly $9 trillion to $11 trillion annualized.
For context: Visa processes approximately $1.3 trillion per month through its traditional network, and Mastercard approximately $850 billion. The card networks' combined $55 billion annualized stablecoin settlement represents a small fraction of both their traditional volumes and total on-chain stablecoin volume. But the trajectory — 10x YoY for Visa, a $1.8 billion acquisition for Mastercard — indicates the two networks view stablecoin rails as a growth vector, not a sideshow.
Several structural dynamics emerge from the data:
Settlement cycle compression. Traditional card settlement operates on T+1 or T+2 cycles. Stablecoin settlement on Solana or Ethereum enables same-day, and in some cases near-instant, finality. Visa's USDC-on-Solana settlement offers seven-day availability, including weekends and holidays, eliminating the settlement gaps that create float and counterparty exposure in traditional systems.
Geographic arbitrage. The Visa-Bridge card program's expansion from 18 to 100+ countries targets markets where dollar access is constrained. In Argentina, Colombia, and similar economies with currency controls or high inflation, stablecoin-linked cards provide a mechanism for consumers to hold dollar-denominated balances and spend them through existing merchant infrastructure. This is payment rail substitution, not crypto speculation.
Infrastructure convergence. Visa is a design partner for Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain being developed by Circle. Visa plans to use Arc for USDC settlement and to operate a validator node. This represents a card network directly participating in blockchain consensus infrastructure — a step beyond using blockchains as passive settlement layers.
The build-vs-buy divergence. Visa has built its stablecoin settlement stack incrementally over five years. Mastercard bought BVNK for $1.8 billion. The approaches reflect different risk calculations: Visa maintains tighter control over its implementation timeline but absorbed years of development cost; Mastercard acquired immediate scale (130 markets, 25+ licenses) but took on integration risk and a high price tag.
The Q4 FY2026 earnings disclosures from Visa, combined with Mastercard's post-acquisition operational data, confirm that the two largest card networks have moved past experimentation. Stablecoin settlement is being embedded into production systems — cross-border remittance, merchant settlement, card issuance, and prefunding infrastructure.
The $55 billion combined run rate is small relative to the $27 trillion-plus in traditional volume the two networks process annually. But three data points suggest the trajectory matters more than the current scale: Visa's 10x year-over-year growth, Mastercard's willingness to pay $1.8 billion for operational infrastructure, and the 225+ card programs pushing stablecoin spending to end users across 50+ countries.
The question is no longer whether traditional payment networks will integrate stablecoins. They have. The operative questions are about speed of adoption, regulatory durability, and which stablecoin standards will dominate settlement — USDC, OUSD, or the growing roster of bank-issued and network-specific alternatives.