Visa quadruples stablecoin transaction volume, expands to four new blockchains

Visa's Stablecoin Surge: A 4X Jump in Transaction Volume and Expanded Blockchain Support

In a significant demonstration of its embrace of digital assets, Visa has reported a monumental surge in its stablecoin operations. The financial giant's latest quarterly report, covering the final fiscal quarter of 2025, reveals a breathtaking fourfold increase in spending via stablecoin-linked cards compared to the previous year. This remarkable growth has propelled the monthly turnover of these digital transactions past the $2.5 billion mark, hinting at an even more colossal annual figure.

Since 2020, Visa has been a quiet but powerful force in the crypto payments landscape, facilitating over $140 billion in combined crypto and stablecoin transactions. This impressive sum is broadly categorized into $100 billion for asset purchases using Visa credentials and $35 billion spent across the merchant network, underscoring the growing acceptance and utility of digital currencies in everyday commerce.

Expanding Horizons: New Blockchains and Enhanced Fiat Conversions

Visa isn't just resting on its laurels; it's actively expanding its infrastructure to accommodate a wider array of digital assets. The company has announced the integration of support for stablecoins across four prominent blockchains. This strategic move, while not explicitly named, strongly suggests the inclusion of widely recognized stablecoins such as USDC, EURC, PYUSD, and USDG, operating on networks like Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche. A key benefit of this expansion is the seamless conversion of these stablecoins into over 25 different fiat currencies, a crucial step for global adoption and usability.

Furthermore, Visa is empowering its client banks with advanced token management capabilities. Through its Tokenized Asset Platform, the company now offers the ability to mint and burn stablecoins, providing greater control and flexibility for financial institutions engaging with digital currencies.

Beyond Transactions: Innovation in Payment Services and Tokenization

Visa's commitment to innovation extends to its Additional Services (VAS) segment. A groundbreaking partnership with Pismo has led to the launch of a stablecoin-linked card in Europe, in collaboration with Gnosis Pay. This initiative marks a significant step towards integrating stablecoins into tangible payment solutions. In another forward-thinking move, Visa has integrated its Token Management Service with Booking.com, a platform that spans over 65 markets. This integration aims to streamline the acceptance of tokenized payments for online merchants, promising a more secure and efficient transaction experience.

“Visa has effectively become a hyper-scalable financial engine – now, anyone who wants to operate in the money movement space can build services on top of our Visa as a Service architecture.”

These words from CEO Ryan McInerney highlight Visa's vision of becoming a foundational layer for the future of finance, enabling a new wave of financial innovation built upon its robust infrastructure.

Tokenization: A New Era of Security and Efficiency

Parallel to its stablecoin advancements, Visa is aggressively pursuing tokenization. This technology fundamentally redefines how sensitive payment data is handled, replacing actual card details with secure digital tokens. The results are already impressive: by the fourth quarter of 2025, Visa had issued over 16 billion tokens, a substantial leap from the 10 billion recorded in May 2024. The company harbors an ambitious strategic goal: to tokenize 100% of all online transactions. Visa asserts that this widespread adoption will drastically reduce fraud risks and accelerate payment processing speeds.

Battling Fraud with AI and Future Outlook

Visa is not only focused on streamlining payments but also on fortifying their security. The company is actively testing the Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, an open framework designed to verify merchants within agentic commerce environments, where AI agents conduct purchases on behalf of users. This proactive approach has yielded significant results, leading to the elimination of over 25,000 fraudulent merchants and the blocking of more than $1 billion in attempted fraudulent transactions within the first year of AI-powered monitoring.

Visa clearly identifies stablecoins, tokenization, and cross-border remittances as its pivotal areas of focus for 2026, with a particular emphasis on emerging markets. This strategic direction signals Visa's intent to remain at the forefront of financial innovation, shaping the future of payments in an increasingly digital and interconnected world.