The five newly added networks are Arc (operated by Circle), Base (Coinbase), Canton Network (Digital Asset), Polygon (Polygon Labs), and Tempo (backed by Stripe). They join Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Stellar, which entered the program in separate phases over several years. Ethereum was first, through a 2021 pilot with Crypto.com. Solana joined in 2023 alongside a merchant acquirer expansion. Stellar and Avalanche were added in early 2025. The multi-year, phased build is central to understanding the scale Visa has assembled before today's announcement.

Visa's stablecoin-linked card programs now span more than 130 programs across more than 50 countries, with more than 175 million merchant locations accessible to cardholders worldwide.

Visa's stablecoin settlement layer lets card issuers and merchant acquirers settle net positions using USDC, PYUSD (PayPal), USDG (Global Dollar, issued by Paxos), and the euro-backed EURC directly on-chain, bypassing the correspondent banking system. That shift matters practically: traditional interbank settlement runs only on business days and can take days to clear.

The on-chain alternative settles around the clock, every day of the year, with near-immediate finality. For markets where remittance demand peaks on weekend evenings, that operational difference is not trivial. Global stablecoin transaction volume over the past 12 months reached $10.2 trillion, against a circulating stablecoin supply of roughly $272 billion.

"Our partners are building in a multi-chain world, and they expect their options to reflect that reality," said Rubail Birwadker, Visa's Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships, in comments reported by CoinDesk. Circle's Nikhil Chandhok described Arc as providing "the performance, predictability, and reliable access to liquidity that institutional payment flows demand," pointing to the chain's design focus on programmable money settlement. Jesse Pollak of Base and Coinbase added that "Visa's expansion is a pivotal step in making stablecoin payments a daily reality," giving Base a direct voice in the announcement alongside Arc.

The Polygon addition carries particular weight for developers across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India, and Bangladesh. Polygon's low per-transaction costs make it viable for high-volume, low-value payment flows, exactly the profile of most remittances and everyday payments in these markets. Those developers can now connect to Visa's settlement infrastructure without migrating their existing stacks to another chain. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 79% of crypto-native users already hold stablecoins, the highest rate of any region globally. Stablecoins account for roughly 43% of on-chain transaction volume in the region, driven by inflation hedging and cross-border transfers. Year-over-year stablecoin growth in Sub-Saharan Africa exceeded 180% in 2025. Visa's own documentation cites Opera Mini Pay as a live example of this dynamic: the platform converts local currencies into stablecoins for savings and everyday spending, and stands as one of the earliest Africa-first stablecoin products operating at scale on Visa's rails.

South Asia presents a parallel opportunity. India leads the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index compiled by Chainalysis, with an estimated 150 million crypto users and more than $100 billion in annual inbound remittances. Traditional remittance costs average around 6.4% on a $200 transfer; stablecoin-based alternatives can settle for as little as one cent per transfer. Platforms built on this cost advantage are scaling quickly. Aspora, one stablecoin remittance service serving the Indian corridor, grew from $400 million to $2 billion in transaction volume in a single year, and Indian senders using crypto-based services have reported saving 20 to 25% in fees compared with traditional channels. The regulatory environment adds complexity. India currently imposes a 30% tax on crypto gains and a 1% tax deducted at source on transactions, a combination that has pushed a significant share of trading volume offshore and that Visa's institutional rails will need to navigate as the program extends into the market.

Pakistan's trajectory has shifted rapidly as well. The government established a formal Crypto Council in March 2025 and is developing the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. The country added 5.4 million new crypto users over the past year to reach 18.2 million total. Visa's partnership with Bridge, a stablecoin card infrastructure provider announced separately, targets expansion of stablecoin-linked cards from 18 countries to more than 100 by the end of 2026, with Africa and the Middle East listed as explicit rollout regions.

The expansion also signals Visa's positioning in institutional finance beyond consumer cards. The inclusion of Canton Network, a privacy-preserving chain designed for regulated capital markets, suggests the company is preparing its rails for tokenized bonds, funds, and treasury instruments, not just stablecoin spending. Tokenized real-world assets currently total $35.7 billion on-chain, with McKinsey projecting that figure could reach $2 trillion by 2030. Institutional adoption is already under way: BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market funds both settle via USDC, illustrating how stablecoin infrastructure and tokenized assets increasingly share the same underlying rails. BBVA is running a production pilot to issue its own stablecoins through Visa's Tokenized Asset Platform.

On the banking access front, Visa announced on April 28 a partnership with WeFi, a decentralized banking platform co-founded by Reeve Collins, a former Tether executive.

"The partnership with Visa really closes that last half mile of onchain banking infrastructure," said Mathieu Altwegg of Visa.

Collins framed WeFi's ambition in structural terms: "We're upgrading the plumbing and offering essentially people bank accounts, because they'll soon have their IBAN numbers," adding that the platform intends to extend services to the underbanked as it scales. WeFi's initial rollout is targeting Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its availability in additional markets, including Africa, remains subject to regulatory clearance and has not yet been confirmed, a distinction worth noting given the platform's stated mission toward the underbanked.

The program is still a pilot, and independent on-chain verification of the card program figures has not been confirmed by sources such as DefiLlama or CoinGecko. Even so, the trajectory points in one direction. One of the world's largest payments networks is now anchoring its settlement infrastructure to the same chains that users across Africa and South Asia have been building on for years. The gap between grassroots adoption and institutional rails is narrowing.