The company disclosed that stablecoin-based settlement through its VisaNet network has reached an annualized run rate of roughly $7 billion as of March 2026. Issuing banks are already settling with Visa seven days a week via blockchain, and the company is now extending that continuous settlement window to acquiring banks as well, a change that could reduce settlement delays for merchants.

"AI is transforming the front end of commerce," said Jack Forestell, Visa's Chief Product and Strategy Officer. "Stablecoins are reshaping the back end."

What Visa Announced

The package of announcements spans three distinct areas: stablecoin infrastructure, agentic commerce tools, and tokenized deposits.

On the stablecoin side, Visa now has more than 160 card programs live or in development globally that allow consumers to spend stablecoin balances directly at any of the company's 175 million-plus merchant locations. A separate initiative will allow banks to convert traditional deposits into programmable digital money that operates continuously, matching the functionality of stablecoins while keeping funds on bank balance sheets.

The agentic commerce tools are aimed at a near-term reality in which software agents, not humans, initiate purchases. Visa introduced five products in this category: Agent Score, which evaluates whether a merchant's website can handle AI-initiated transactions; Agentic Directory, a verified registry of approved agents and merchants; a Large Transaction Model trained on billions of Visa transactions for both fraud detection and false decline reduction; Token Assurance Signal, which generates a per-transaction trust score; and Enhanced Token Data, which gives more detail about where and how a token is being used.

Separately, Visa confirmed a partnership with OpenAI that embeds Visa's payment infrastructure directly into ChatGPT and other OpenAI products. The integration lets AI agents complete purchases on behalf of users within configurable limits, including merchant category restrictions and spending caps, using tokenized credentials and real-time fraud monitoring.

The Bridge Expansion and What It Means Outside the US

The geographic reach of Visa's stablecoin push extends well beyond American consumers. In March 2026, Visa and Bridge (a payments infrastructure company owned by Stripe) announced plans to expand stablecoin-linked card programs from 18 active countries to more than 100, including markets across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East, by the end of this year.

"One more way to bring the speed, transparency and programmability of stablecoins directly into the settlement process," said Cuy Sheffield, Visa's Head of Crypto, in March, describing the expansion.

For Africa, the practical consequences are significant. Stablecoins already account for 43% of all crypto transaction volume in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Finextra, adopted largely out of necessity in markets where local currencies depreciate rapidly and legacy remittance services charge fees that can consume a material share of transfers. Finextra data indicates that stablecoins can lower transaction costs by up to 90% compared to legacy SWIFT or correspondent banking channels. A Visa card that spends a stablecoin balance without forcing conversion back to local currency removes a costly and friction-heavy step for users who already hold digital dollars as savings. Parallel developments are reinforcing the region's centrality to stablecoin infrastructure: in May 2026, Tether and LemFi announced a partnership integrating USDT as a settlement layer across Africa-Asia corridors, a complementary expansion that runs alongside Visa's own push. The regulatory environment is also shifting, with multiple African jurisdictions actively developing digital asset frameworks in 2026, making the continent one of the more dynamic regulatory theaters for stablecoin adoption.

South Asia presents a more fragmented picture. India remains the world's largest remittance recipient at roughly $135 billion in 2025, and Indian addresses recorded approximately $89 billion in stablecoin volume in 2024. However, India's central bank has resisted private stablecoin adoption, and a 30% flat tax on crypto gains alongside a 1% tax deducted at source on crypto transfers continues to suppress formal use. The latter applies at the transaction level, adding friction that compounds the gains tax for active participants. Visa's card products would need a shift in Reserve Bank of India policy to gain meaningful traction there.

Pakistan, by contrast, is the standout regulatory mover in the region. Its Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority opened a sandbox in February 2026, the central bank lifted a seven-year prohibition on banks serving crypto firms in April 2026, and stablecoin payments are listed as a priority vertical for the new framework. Pakistan receives substantial remittance flows from Gulf states, making it a natural fit for the kind of low-cost corridor infrastructure Visa and Bridge are building.

Bangladesh occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. The country maintains a strictly prohibitionist stance, has no digital asset framework in development, and is actively integrating India's UPI system rather than pursuing crypto-based alternatives. For the millions of Bangladeshis who rely on remittance corridors, Visa's stablecoin products currently have no regulatory pathway.

Market Context

The broader stablecoin market now stands at roughly $321 billion in total supply, with Tether (USDT) at approximately $188 to $190 billion and USD Coin (USDC) at $77 to $78 billion, according to DefiLlama data. On-chain stablecoin transaction volume surpassed $33 trillion in 2025, exceeding Visa's own reported annual throughput figures. Ethereum leads the market, holding approximately $170 billion in stablecoin supply and roughly 60% of the global total. TRON holds the second-largest share at around $87 billion, a detail relevant to Visa's regional ambitions: TRON-based USDT is the dominant format across Africa and South and Southeast Asia because of its low transaction fees.

Regulatory tailwinds are also accelerating corporate participation. The US GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, established a comprehensive federal framework for payment stablecoins, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional national trust bank charters to Circle, Paxos, and three other firms in December 2025. Final implementation rules are due by July 18, 2026.

The OCC's July deadline and Visa's end-of-year card rollout target are running on parallel timelines, and the question worth watching is whether the final implementation rules will give US-headquartered payment networks the regulatory clarity needed to build aggressively on dollar-pegged stablecoins in regulated markets. How those rules land will, in the view of many observers, shape the pace of mainstream stablecoin adoption well beyond the remainder of 2026.