Visa’s Stablecoin Shift Goes Multichain on Stellar and Avalanche

The moment Visa went stablecoin native

On July 31, 2025, Visa confirmed that its settlement platform now supports four stablecoins across four blockchains. In a single stroke, the world’s largest card network added PayPal USD and Global Dollar, integrated the euro-backed EURC, and expanded beyond Ethereum and Solana to Stellar and Avalanche. The company did not just add another way to cash out crypto. It widened the pipes that connect card programs, acquirers, and issuers to always-on digital dollars and euros. See Visa expands stablecoin settlement support.

By October 20, 2025, follow-on updates and partner news made the expansion feel less like a pilot and more like a platform. PYUSD and USDG were visible alongside USDC and EURC across Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche, and developers started to see how multi-chain settlement could be treated like any other treasury rail. In parallel, Visa introduced a stablecoin prefunding option for Visa Direct on September 30, putting real weight behind 24-7 liquidity for cross-border payouts. That second step is key because it shows how onchain money will power programs that ordinary customers use every day. See Visa Direct stablecoin prefunding pilot.

Think of Visa’s network as a global freeway. For decades, traffic has moved in well-timed lanes that slow down at night and on weekends. Stablecoins turn on the high-occupancy lanes that never close. Now those HOV lanes span four different highways at once: Ethereum for security, Solana for throughput, Stellar for low-cost payments, and Avalanche for customizable subnets. For broader context on adoption, see Solana Spot ETFs go live. The result is not a crypto detour. It is the main road getting faster.

What changed under the hood

Visa’s settlement traditionally clears between issuing and acquiring banks in fiat currencies. That process is reliable but tied to banking hours and intermediaries. With stablecoins, settlement moves to public ledgers. Issuers can prefund obligations in USDC, PYUSD, USDG, or EURC and redeem or rotate liquidity across chains when needed. Acquirers can receive settlement faster and recycle working capital in near real time.

Two other pieces matter:

Multi-coin flexibility. USDC remains the default digital dollar for many programs, but PYUSD covers the PayPal and Venmo universe, USDG targets institutional treasury use cases with Paxos infrastructure, and EURC opens euro settlement to European programs and exporters billing in euros.
Multi-chain routing. Your program can choose a chain per use case. A high-throughput consumer wallet might favor Solana. A remittance product that stresses low fees and broad access might favor Stellar. A partner building custom compliance logic could lean on Avalanche subnets. Ethereum remains the common denominator for custody frameworks and ecosystem tooling.

This is not about consumers paying merchants directly in tokens. It is about the plumbing between issuers, acquirers, and processors getting an always-on upgrade. The card at the point of sale still works the same. Treasury gets faster, cheaper, and programmable.

Four unlocks the market will notice next

1) Cross-border payouts that settle in minutes, not days

Use case: A marketplace needs to pay drivers in Mexico, developers in Poland, and sellers in Nigeria. Today, finance teams pre-position funds in local accounts and deal with cut-off times. With stablecoin prefunding, the marketplace keeps most liquidity in USDC or PYUSD, tops up program balances as orders clear, then pays out through local partners with rapid off-ramps. The result is less idle cash, fewer failed payouts, and fewer reconciliation mismatches.

Mechanism: Treasury moves USDC on Stellar or Solana to prefund a Visa Direct corridor. Local partners convert to local currency for the recipient. When chargebacks or adjustments occur, the program nets out at the next cycle in the same stablecoin. Fees drop from multiple spreads to a single conversion plus network costs.

What to watch: Coverage maps. The first corridors will be where stablecoin liquidity and compliant off-ramps are mature. Latin America, parts of Africa, and Eastern Europe are likely leaders.

2) Wallet-issued cards that spend from stablecoin balances

Use case: A global wallet lets customers hold PYUSD or USDC, then swipe or tap at any merchant. At checkout, the wallet converts a bit of the stablecoin balance to the merchant’s currency. The user gets a simple statement. The merchant gets paid as usual.

Mechanism: The wallet integrates with a card-issuing partner and uses stablecoin settlement with Visa for funding flows and reconciliation. This is where multi-chain support matters. If user balances sit on Stellar for low fees, the wallet can still settle card flows on that chain while keeping other lines of business on Ethereum or Solana.

What to watch: Issuers and processors that specialize in stablecoin orchestration. Expect feature competition around instant top-ups, onchain receipts, and rewards denominated in stablecoins.

3) Onchain treasuries that finally match enterprise controls

Use case: A fintech or marketplace wants to run a portion of operating cash in a regulated stablecoin to speed settlements and reduce trapped capital. The blocker has been policy, audit, and key management. With mature custody, policy-based wallets, and onchain settlement windows that map to existing controls, this gets practical.

Mechanism: Stablecoin balances sit in segregated wallets with role-based approvals and daily transfer caps. Programmatic rules ensure only whitelisted addresses receive funds. Cash forecasting taps onchain data. Accounting uses cost basis and realized gain rules that match stablecoins held at par.

What to watch: Audit-ready playbooks that map onchain activity to familiar controls and reports. Controllers will want clear cut-offs and reversal procedures. Visa’s prefunding construct provides a familiar framework for that.

4) Real world asset coupon distribution without the headache

Use case: A tokenized treasury bill fund pays monthly coupons to thousands of wallets worldwide. Traditional wires are expensive and slow. Stablecoin payouts are fast, but tracking entitlements, taxes, and errors is hard. With Visa’s rails in the mix, an issuer can instruct stablecoin payouts on a schedule that aligns with card settlement cycles. Investors can choose to receive coupons in USDC or EURC and sweep them to a card-linked wallet to spend.

Mechanism: The RWA platform tracks onchain share balances, calculates entitlements, and calls a payout contract that releases stablecoins to investor wallets. If an investor wants instant spendability, their wallet’s card program converts balances at the point of sale. Disputes and corrections net in the next settlement window.

What to watch: Tax documentation and withholding. RWA platforms will need jurisdiction-aware logic and clear disclosures. Expect standardized modules to emerge.

Who benefits and who gets squeezed

Winners:

Global wallets and neobanks that already custody stablecoins. They can issue cards with less friction and support regional payouts without tying up large pre-funds in local banks.
Marketplaces and cross-border payroll providers. Lower idle balances, faster payouts, and simpler reconciliation will improve working capital and user experience.
Issuers and acquirers that embrace stablecoin settlement. They can recycle liquidity faster and win programs that want onchain flexibility without giving up card acceptance.
Stablecoin issuers that meet strict transparency and redemption standards. When settlement volume moves onchain, issuers with clean attestations and robust redemption will win flows.

Pressured:

Correspondent banks that make money on float and friction. As prefunding moves to stablecoins and settles in minutes, float income and fee layers shrink.
Processors that only support legacy cut-offs. If your systems cannot ingest onchain confirmations or reconcile seven days a week, program managers will look elsewhere.
Stablecoins without credible backing or clear compliance posture. Settlement flows are conservative. If redemption is sluggish or disclosures are thin, issuers will not be selected.

Nuance: This is not an overnight displacement of cards or the banking system. It is a migration of the back office from batch to onchain. The companies that adapt will defend share. Those that do not will feel it in margin and win rates.

A builder playbook to ship before 2026

You have fourteen months. Here is a concrete plan to get from idea to production.

1) Choose your regulatory home and program type

Decide whether you will be a program manager, a wallet issuing a card, or a payout platform using Visa Direct. Your choices drive licensing and partners.
Map where your customers live and where funds will flow. Stablecoin rules differ by country, as outlined in the stablecoin race to 2026. Work with counsel early to define issuer risk, travel rule obligations, and tax.

2) Pick your settlement currency and chain per use case

Default to USDC or PYUSD for dollar flows and EURC for euro programs. Select USDG if you want Paxos infrastructure and specific redemption rails.
Choose Solana or Stellar for high-volume, low-fee payouts and consumer wallets. Choose Ethereum for custody standardization or when you need the broadest set of dev tools. Consider Avalanche if custom logic or dedicated throughput is a priority.
Build a chain-abstraction layer from day one. You need to rotate liquidity across chains as fees and load change.

3) Select custody and key management

Use a custody provider with policy-based wallets, hardware security modules, and granular approval workflows. Require multi-sig or multi-party computation for treasury keys. For consumer UX, see how smart-account wallets go mainstream to reduce support risk.
Separate program treasury from operational hot wallets. Implement daily limits and circuit breakers for both.

4) Integrate stablecoin settlement into treasury ops

Connect to Visa’s stablecoin programs for settlement and reconciliation. Align your daily cut-offs with onchain windows to avoid end-of-day rushes.
For payouts, integrate the stablecoin prefunding pilot where available so you can move cash from onchain to local currency quickly and repeatedly.
Automate chain fee management. Maintain buffers of native gas tokens per chain and monitor fee spikes with alerts.

5) Build compliance and monitoring that fits onchain reality

Screen addresses on deposit and withdrawal. Enforce travel rule requirements when thresholds are hit.
Maintain allowlists for counterparties such as issuers, processors, and known off-ramps. Block newly sanctioned addresses automatically.
Implement anomaly detection on chain level. Watch for unusual transfer patterns, rapid balance drains, or cross-chain hops that do not match your workflows.

6) Design reconciliation that auditors will like

Mirror every onchain transfer in an internal ledger with immutable event logs. Keep block height and transaction hash in journal entries.
Produce daily settlement reports that tie onchain balances to fiat bank positions and card network reports. Treat stablecoin movements as cash equivalents when held at par.
Define reversal and adjustment procedures. Some errors must be netted in the next cycle. Others require immediate corrective transfers with traceable audit trails.

7) Offer great user experiences without hiding the rails

Explain to users how balances work, which stablecoins you support, and how disputes are handled. Give them a clear receipt that links to an onchain explorer so they can verify movement.
Provide instant card top-ups, onchain receipts, and rewards that accrue in stablecoins. These features make the rails tangible without confusing users.

8) Prepare for failure modes

Stablecoin depeg: Hold a portion of operational balances across multiple issuers. Define auto-rotation rules if a peg breaks beyond a threshold.
Chain outage: Support at least two chains for critical flows. Automate failover and reconcile later.
Custody incident: Keep offline backups of signing keys and a documented disaster recovery plan. Test it.

9) Measure what matters

Time to settle. Track median minutes from authorization to funds-available for payouts.
Liquidity efficiency. Measure idle balances as a percent of gross settlement versus baseline.
Reconciliation accuracy. Count unresolved breaks at day end. Aim to cut them by half in the first quarter.
Unit economics. Quantify the total cost per payout or per card transaction, including gas, spreads, and partner fees.

10) Ship a focused pilot, then scale in waves

Start with a single corridor or a single card program and a narrow set of merchants or users. Prove out the operational model, then add chains and currencies.
Socialize results with finance and risk teams. When they see faster settlement and cleaner reconciliation, you get green lights to expand.

Practical examples you can implement now

Cross-border contractor payroll: Settle invoices weekly in USDC on Stellar. Prefund Visa Direct in stablecoins and deliver local currency same day. Contractors see predictable timing and you keep less cash trapped.
Creator card with stablecoin rewards: Offer a card that draws from a USDC balance and pays rewards in PYUSD. Users can spend rewards instantly or sweep them to savings.
RWA coupon autopay: Tokenized T-bill holders opt into monthly USDC coupons. Give them a toggle to route coupons to their card wallet for immediate spend or to an interest-bearing token.
Merchant settlement speed-up: An acquirer in a high-tourism market receives settlement in EURC on Avalanche, converts to euros, and pays merchants next morning instead of two days later.

Risks and how to handle them

Regulatory shifts: Build modular support for different stablecoins per market. If rules tighten in one region, you can switch flows to approved issuers without rewriting everything.
Counterparty risk: Hold balances across multiple stablecoin issuers and multiple custody partners. Run weekly redemption tests in small size so you are not surprised when you need speed.
Operational risk: Practice incident drills for chain congestion, custody downtime, and partner outages. Document who decides when to fail over and how to reconcile after.
Consumer protection: Stablecoin-linked cards still inherit card network rules for disputes and chargebacks. Make disclosures clear so users know when they hold a token and when they hold a fiat balance.

What this means for the next decade

Visa’s move is not a marketing stunt. It is a refit of the settlement engine that powers consumer and business payments. When the pipes get faster and programmable, new products tend to look obvious in hindsight. Workers in one country get paid after a shift. A tokenized bond pays coupons to a wallet on the first of the month. A wallet card spends balances across borders without foreign exchange surprises. None of these require a new merchant behavior. They require better plumbing.

The network effects are real. More chains bring more resiliency. More stablecoins bring more currency choice. More issuers and acquirers that turn on these rails bring more places to use them. The destination is not a world where every checkout is a token transfer. It is a world where settlement never sleeps and treasury strategies are finally free from the calendar.

The bottom line

The July 31 expansion and the October 20 follow-through mark the moment card settlement jumped to 24-7 onchain rails. You do not need to rebuild your product to benefit. You need to treat stablecoins as a first-class treasury rail. Pick your token and chain. Wire up custody and compliance. Integrate settlement and prefunding. Start with one corridor or one card program and measure the gains.

If you begin now, you can ship before 2026 and meet customers where the money already is: onchain, liquid, and ready at any hour. That is how this becomes less about crypto and more about modern payments that simply work.