TL;DR
Visa launched a stablecoin platform with Open USD support, sending Circle shares down six percent as card networks race to own crypto payments.
Visa launched the Visa Stablecoin Platform on Thursday, a new infrastructure product that lets banks and payment processors issue, manage, and settle stablecoin transactions through Visa’s network. The platform launches with native support for Open USD, the stablecoin backed by a consortium of more than 140 firms including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and BlackRock. Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, said the product is designed to make stablecoins “as easy to use as any other form of money on the Visa network,” according to the company’s announcement.
The platform includes a Wallet-as-a-Service offering that handles custody, compliance, and transaction management for institutions that want to hold and move stablecoins without building the infrastructure themselves. Security features include dual-control approval workflows, audit logging, passkey authentication, and configurable allow lists for counterparties. Visa said the platform is currently in beta testing with select clients and will expand availability in the coming months.
The announcement sent shares of Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, down roughly six percent, while Coinbase fell about four and a half percent, according to Bloomberg. Visa’s own stock rose about two percent on the news. Open USD charges zero mint and redeem fees and returns nearly all reserve income to distribution partners, a pricing model that directly undercuts Circle’s economics and explains why the market reacted the way it did.
The stablecoin market has grown to more than $310 billion in total circulation, and Morningstar projects it could reach nearly one and a half trillion dollars by 2035. The US GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, created the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, giving institutions like Visa clearer rules to operate under. The Open Standard consortium behind Open USD launched earlier this month with backing from Alphabet, BNY, Coinbase, and dozens of other firms, positioning itself as the industry’s answer to Circle’s dominance.
Visa said the platform is designed to work alongside its existing stablecoin capabilities, including settlement infrastructure that reached a $7 billion annualized run rate in April and stablecoin-linked card programmes. The move mirrors what Mastercard did when it acquired stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK for nearly $2 billion earlier this year, signaling that both major card networks now see stablecoins as core to their future rather than a niche experiment. PayPal has also been expanding its own stablecoin PYUSD, making the payments industry’s pivot toward blockchain-based settlement one of the defining trends of 2026.
The Visa Stablecoin Platform is still in beta, and Visa has not disclosed how many clients are testing it or when it will be generally available. But the combination of Visa’s network, which processes transactions across more than 200 countries and territories, with the zero-fee economics of Open USD creates a competitive threat that neither Circle nor any other stablecoin issuer has faced before. Whether banks and fintechs adopt it will depend on how well Visa executes the integration, but the infrastructure play itself is the clearest signal yet that traditional payments companies intend to own the stablecoin layer rather than simply connect to it.
