Key takeaways
- Visa now allows US institutions to settle USDC transactions through Solana.
- With this deployment, the company aims to improve treasury efficiency, liquidity timing and operational resilience of banks and fintech partners.
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Visa is offering USDC settlement to U.S. issuers and acquirers, extending its stablecoin capabilities to core institutional settlement operations, the global payments giant announced Tuesday.
Visa partners can now settle in USDC, a leading stablecoin issued by Circle. The launch follows Visa’s first experiments with stablecoins. Its growing global settlement business now exceeds $3.5 billion in annualized volume.
Visa said banks such as Cross River Bank and Lead Bank have started moving into USDC via the Solana blockchain. The company plans to expand access to the solution across the United States throughout 2026.
The solution provides seven-day uptime, faster settlement cycles and more predictable liquidity management, benefiting banks and fintechs without changing the cardholder experience.
Discussing the rollout, Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, said the decision follows growing interest from banking partners who are actively preparing for adoption.
Birwadker added that financial institutions want fast, programmable settlement tools that work alongside existing treasury systems.
“By bringing USDC settlement to the United States, Visa offers reliable, plug-and-play capability that improves treasury efficiencies while maintaining the security, compliance and resiliency standards required by our network,” he noted.
“The introduction of USDC settlement in the United States with Visa is an important step for internet-native money to scale at the speed of software,” said Nikhil Chandhok, chief product and technology officer at Circle. “This helps card-issuing financial institutions modernize their treasury and unlock new services while maintaining the transparency and trust that USDC is known for.”
Visa is partnering with Circle as a design participant for Arc, a new layer 1 blockchain aimed at supporting institutional activity at scale. These efforts reinforce Visa’s strategy to modernize its settlement infrastructure while maintaining high standards for security, compliance and resiliency, according to the company.
