Visa Stablecoin Settlement Reaches a New Milestone
Visa stablecoin settlement has surpassed a $25 billion annualized run rate, approximately ten times its level a year earlier, CEO Ryan McInerney said during the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call.
The published earnings-call transcript also identifies five supported settlement tokens: USDC, USDG, EURC, PYUSD and SBC. Settlement support now spans 10 blockchains.
McInerney described Visa’s approach as neutral toward both stablecoins and blockchain networks. However, support does not reveal how settlement volume is distributed among the individual tokens.
That leaves an important question unanswered: which issuers are capturing the most activity?
What the $25 Billion Figure Actually Measures
An annualized run rate extrapolates a recent level of activity over a year. It does not mean Visa completed that amount of stablecoin settlement during the previous 12 months.
Nor is the figure Visa’s revenue, stablecoin supply or total consumer spending on stablecoin-linked cards.
Settlement is the movement of funds used to satisfy payment obligations between financial institutions and the network. Customers can continue using familiar payment methods while institutions change how they move money behind the scenes.
Visa’s earlier disclosures show how the reported pace has developed:
Disclosure | Reported annualized stablecoin settlement run rate |
|---|---|
April 29, 2026 | $7 billion |
September 8, 2026 | More than $20 billion |
October 27 earnings call | More than $25 billion |
These are snapshots of annualized activity. They should not be added together to calculate cumulative settlement.
For businesses, the practical question is whether the infrastructure improves funding, reconciliation and settlement reliability. Bitnxt’s crypto payment gateway guide explains why those factors matter alongside transaction fees.
The Lloyds Pilot Shows What Settlement Looks Like
Visa’s September announcement with Lloyds Banking Group provides a concrete example.
During a seven-day live pilot, Lloyds settled $750,000 in payment obligations using USDC purchased through Archax. Visa said funds reached it in under an hour, including over the weekend.
The official Lloyds–Visa announcement explicitly distinguishes the settlement process from how customers make payments.
That distinction helps explain the business case. A bank may want more flexible access to settlement without requiring customers to hold cryptocurrency or learn to use a blockchain wallet.
The pilot demonstrates that the process worked for those transactions. It does not establish identical performance or cost savings across every market and institution.
Visa Direct Has Also Moved Beyond Testing
On October 15, Visa separately announced that stablecoin-enabled prefunding through Visa Direct had entered commercial production, with Inyo Global as its first enabler.
The implementation gives eligible businesses the option to prefund cross-border payouts using USDC in near real time, subject to availability requirements.
Prefunding and settlement are related but distinct activities. Prefunding supplies money before a payment is made; settlement discharges the resulting obligations. The Visa Direct announcement should therefore not be treated as a breakdown of the entire $25 billion settlement figure.
Together, the developments show stablecoins being tested and deployed at different stages of payment processing.
Readers comparing the assets used in these systems can consult Bitnxt’s USDT and USDC analysis. A stablecoin’s reserves, redemption arrangements and issuer controls remain relevant even when its payment integrations expand.
Which Stablecoins Could Benefit?
USDC has identifiable roles in both the Lloyds pilot and Inyo’s prefunding implementation. That provides evidence of specific use cases, rather than proof of market-wide dominance.
Visa is also building around Open USD. Its July 16 announcement introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform, initially for selected beta clients, with capabilities for holding, transferring, minting and redeeming Open USD.
This creates room for competition between issuers across different products. It does not establish that Open USD has displaced any of the five settlement tokens named on the earnings call.
More usage also does not imply that a dollar stablecoin should appreciate above its intended peg. Potential benefits concern adoption, circulating balances and issuer economics—not a conventional token-price rally.
Bitnxt’s Take: Follow Repeat Usage and Real Savings
Our assessment is that the strongest part of Visa’s update is the combination of reported growth and identifiable implementations.
A banking pilot shows operational feasibility. Commercial prefunding shows a service entering production. A rising settlement run rate suggests broader activity. Each answers a different question, and none should substitute for the others.
The next useful disclosures would show recurring client participation, settlement volumes over complete periods and measurable changes in funding costs or liquidity requirements. A token-by-token breakdown would also make claims about the winning stablecoin more credible.
Bitnxt’s stablecoin yield explainer applies a related principle: follow the underlying economic mechanism before drawing conclusions from a headline.
Visa’s figures support the case that stablecoins are becoming part of payment infrastructure. Whether that growth produces durable benefits will depend on how reliably—and economically—the services work at scale.
