Visa Brings Stablecoin Settlement Into Real-Time Payments

A new collaboration between a major card network and a crypto-native infrastructure firm shows how this shift is starting to take shape behind the scenes.

Visa tests stablecoins without touching the card swipe

Instead of launching a new crypto product, Visa is experimenting with stablecoins inside its existing money-movement rails. Through a partnership with BVNK, Visa is introducing pilot programs that allow stablecoins to be used for funding and payouts on Visa Direct.

Visa Direct already moves funds globally at massive scale, with annualized volumes around $1.7 trillion. The new pilots don’t replace fiat settlement. Instead, they sit alongside it, giving selected business users an additional option: fund payouts with stablecoins or receive funds directly in digital dollars.

How the setup actually works

Under the pilot structure, businesses can pre-fund Visa Direct payouts using stablecoins rather than bank transfers. On the receiving side, some end users will be able to accept those payouts straight into supported crypto wallets, holding balances in stablecoins instead of converting to local fiat.

The technical heavy lifting comes from BVNK, which processes more than $30 billion in stablecoin transactions each year. Its infrastructure enables near-instant settlement and wallet-based delivery, plugging into Visa Direct without altering its core design.

Limited rollout by design

This is not a global launch. The pilots are restricted to approved jurisdictions and markets where stablecoin usage is already common. Visa has made it clear that regulatory alignment and existing demand are prerequisites before expanding the model further.

The benefit for businesses is flexibility. Stablecoin payouts can operate outside traditional banking hours and avoid some of the friction tied to cross-border transfers, while still using Visa’s familiar network.

From strategic investment to live payments

The partnership didn’t appear overnight. Visa Ventures invested in BVNK in 2025, signaling early interest in stablecoin settlement infrastructure. The current pilots mark the first time that relationship has translated into a live deployment inside Visa’s payment rails.

According to Mark Nelsen, who oversees commercial and money-movement products, the goal is to expand settlement options without disrupting how clients already use Visa. Faster settlement windows are the priority, not a wholesale shift to crypto-native workflows.

From BVNK’s side, Jesse Hemson-Struthers emphasized that the focus is on embedding stablecoins into large-scale networks rather than building parallel systems that operate in isolation.

What this signals for payments

Rather than positioning stablecoins as an alternative to traditional finance, Visa’s approach treats them as another settlement layer – similar to how different currencies already coexist on its network. That framing matters.

If the pilots scale, stablecoins could become a background tool for global payouts, invisible to end users but valuable to businesses that need speed, flexibility, and always-on settlement. It’s a cautious move, but a deliberate one: testing digital dollars where they add efficiency, without forcing the broader system to change overnight.

In practice, this may be how stablecoins gain real-world traction – not by replacing cards or banks, but by quietly upgrading how money moves underneath them.

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