TL;DR
- Visa is adding Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo to its global stablecoin settlement pilot.
- The program now supports nine blockchains, adding to existing support for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar.
- Visa says the pilot has reached a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter.
- The real shift is that stablecoin settlement is moving from isolated pilots into multi-chain payment infrastructure.
Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement pilot across five more blockchains, pushing one of the world’s largest payment networks deeper into onchain settlement.
The company said it is adding Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo to the program, bringing total supported networks to nine. Visa also said the pilot has reached a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, up 50% from last quarter.
Simply put, Visa is no longer testing stablecoin settlement on one or two rails. It is building for a multi-chain world where banks, issuers and acquirers can choose the network that best fits their settlement needs.
Visa Is Moving Stablecoin Settlement Into Multi-Chain Infrastructure
The key change is scale.
Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot already supported Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar. The new additions expand that footprint into five very different ecosystems: Arc for programmable money, Base for consumer and Coinbase-linked activity, Canton for regulated institutional workflows, Polygon for high-throughput payments and Tempo for stablecoin liquidity and settlement.
That mix matters. Visa is not only adding more chains for coverage. It is adding chains that serve different parts of the payments market: regulated finance, consumer apps, fintech settlement, liquidity routing and merchant-scale payments.
Visa’s Rubail Birwadker framed the move around partner choice, saying clients are building in a multi-chain world and expect their options to reflect that. That is the useful takeaway: Visa wants to act as the common settlement layer across different blockchain ecosystems, not pick a single winner.
What Changed
The stablecoin story at Visa has moved quickly.
In December 2025, Visa launched USDC settlement for U.S. banks with an annualized stablecoin settlement volume above $3.5 billion. Now the company says the run rate has reached $7 billion, while the number of supported chains has more than doubled.
That does not make stablecoins the main settlement rail for Visa. Traditional fiat rails still dominate. But it does show that stablecoin settlement is becoming a real operating track inside the network, not just an innovation lab experiment.
It also connects with the broader stablecoin flow story: liquidity is no longer concentrated in one chain, one exchange or one use case. Payment firms now have to support a market where stablecoins move across many ecosystems at once.
The Five New Chains Say A Lot About Visa’s Strategy
Each new network adds a different angle to the pilot.
Base gives Visa proximity to Coinbase’s consumer and developer ecosystem. Polygon brings a long-running payments and enterprise blockchain footprint. Canton gives the program a privacy-focused institutional chain built for regulated finance. Arc strengthens the Circle and USDC angle. Tempo points toward faster stablecoin liquidity and settlement flows.
That is the more important story than the headline number. Visa is not only expanding capacity. It is mapping its stablecoin settlement layer onto the parts of crypto where payment activity, regulated assets and onchain commerce are already forming.
This also fits the same market-structure shift seen in tokenized collateral and trading workflows, where institutions are trying to make blockchain assets usable inside real financial operations instead of leaving them as isolated onchain products.
Who It Affects Now
The first group affected is issuers and acquirers working with Visa. More chain support gives them more flexibility in how they settle and manage liquidity, especially across regions and time zones.
The second group is stablecoin infrastructure providers. Visa’s expansion makes blockchain compatibility a bigger competitive issue. Networks that can offer speed, liquidity, compliance tools and reliable operations have a better shot at becoming part of payment flows.
The third group is banks and fintechs. For them, the value is not that users suddenly notice a blockchain in the checkout flow. The value is faster treasury movement, weekend availability and more settlement options behind the scenes.
Merchants and consumers may not see much change at the front end yet. That is part of the point. Visa is trying to make stablecoin settlement work under the hood without forcing the payment experience to feel crypto-native.
Why It Matters
This story matters because Visa is treating stablecoins less like a threat to card networks and more like a settlement layer it can plug into.
That is a major shift in the payments stack. Stablecoins are moving from exchange liquidity and crypto-native transfers into bank settlement, card programs and treasury operations. Visa’s $7 billion run rate is still small compared with its global payment volume, but the growth rate shows real demand from financial institutions, fintechs and payment providers.
The next thing to watch is usage by corridor and chain. If settlement volume spreads across the new networks, Visa’s pilot will look more like a genuine multi-chain payments layer. If activity stays concentrated on one or two chains, the expansion will look more like optionality than adoption.
The bigger signal is clear: stablecoin infrastructure is becoming part of mainstream payments. The competition now is not just which stablecoin wins, but which networks, custodians, banks and payment companies can make stablecoin settlement reliable enough for real money movement at scale.