Visa's Stablecoin Volume Grew 10x in a Year: Which Stablecoins Benefit?

Visa’s annualized stablecoin settlement run rate passed $25 billion, roughly 10x its level a year earlier, CEO Ryan McInerney told analysts on Tuesday. The network now settles in five stablecoins and says it favors none, which leaves open which issuers capture the flow.

The figure is a run rate, meaning recent volume extrapolated across 12 months, and the call did not tie it to Visa’s fiscal 2027 outlook of low double-digit revenue growth. Issuers of the five supported tokens, among them USD Coin (USDC) and PayPal USD (PYUSD), now compete for a settlement channel that grew roughly 10x in a year.

Can Visa’s Stablecoin Neutrality Survive Its Open USD Backing?

Settlement, the step where card issuers and acquirers pay each other what they owe, now runs across 10 blockchains, more than double the count a year ago. The supported tokens are USDC, Global Dollar (USDG), Circle’s euro-backed Euro Coin (EURC), PYUSD, and SBC, a dollar stablecoin issued by Brale.

McInerney presented neutrality as policy when asked how Visa would treat different tokens.

“we are stablecoin agnostic. We are blockchain agnostic.”

Ryan McInerney, Visa

Visa also belongs to the Open USD consortium, a rival to USDC. Its Open USD (OUSD) token, linked to Visa’s Flex Credential payment product, had more than $800 million in circulation as of Oct. 15.

McInerney said OUSD will be built into Visa’s other products, including Visa Direct, its real-time money movement platform.

Who Gains if Card Networks Become the Stablecoin Gateway?

Beyond settlement, Visa counts more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs, up over 70% in a year. Spending on roughly 5 million of those cards grew more than 150% across over 50 countries.

Its Visa Stablecoin Platform, a service for launching stablecoin-based products, is live in six markets including the U.S., Mexico, and the U.K. Management cited a pipeline of more than 300 partners.

Visa is positioning as the venue for bank demand for stablecoins, and the pattern suggests token competition may play out on its network rather than around it. That read would weaken if banks and issuers begin settling directly onchain without a card network in the middle.

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