Visa Introduces Onchain Credit for Stablecoin Card Settlement as Annualized Settlement Tops $20 Billion
Visa is linking VisaNet data to onchain credit for stablecoin card settlement. Visa says settlement now exceeds a $20B annualized run rate.
Visa has introduced an onchain credit model for stablecoin-linked card programs, connecting VisaNet settlement data with blockchain lending infrastructure so participating fintechs can finance the working capital required for card settlement.
The September 8 announcement arrives after stablecoin cards moved from a niche product into a material part of Visa's digital-asset activity. Visa says it now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, that payment volume across those programs has risen nearly 200% year over year, and that stablecoin settlement on Visa is running above a $20 billion annualized rate. Those are company-reported figures rather than an independent measure of the entire stablecoin-card market. Visa.
Card settlement creates a working-capital problem
A stablecoin balance can make funding and treasury movement programmable, but it does not remove the timing obligations of a card program. Issuers and program managers still have to meet network settlement requirements, and the money needed for that settlement may have to be available before all of the program's underlying cash flows have completed.
Visa's model uses settlement information from VisaNet as an input to onchain credit infrastructure. The commercial change is therefore not at the merchant checkout. It is behind the card, where a program may need short-duration financing to bridge settlement obligations.
That distinction matters because stablecoin cards are often described as a way to connect digital-dollar balances directly to existing merchant acceptance. As usage grows, however, the businesses operating those cards acquire the same kinds of liquidity and funding constraints found elsewhere in payments.
Credit Coop supplies the lending infrastructure
Visa identified Credit Coop as an early infrastructure provider. Visa says facilities using the model have financed more than $2.5 billion of cumulative settlement volume since 2023, across more than 3,000 borrowing events and 9,000 onchain repayments, with no defaults across the participating facilities.
Those performance figures come from Visa and should not be read as audited statistics for onchain private credit as a whole. They do show the type of financing being attached to card settlement: short-duration borrowing linked to observable payment obligations, with repayment recorded onchain.
The arrangement should also not be simplified into “Visa is lending to stablecoin card companies.” The announcement describes Visa providing network data and helping connect its partners to onchain credit infrastructure. The capital can be supplied through lending providers rather than from Visa's own balance sheet.
Stablecoin cards are developing a financing layer
The development adds another layer to the stablecoin-card market. Earlier growth was mostly measured through card launches, wallet integrations and spending volume. Financing settlement introduces a balance-sheet question: who supplies the liquidity that lets a card program grow without tying up an equivalent amount of its own cash?
That is a more mature problem than simply proving a stablecoin can fund a card transaction. It also makes the economics easier to compare with conventional payments, where settlement timing, collateral, credit lines and treasury management already determine how efficiently programs scale.
For stablecoin infrastructure providers, the important metric will not only be spending. Borrowing cost, utilization, collateral requirements, lender concentration and defaults will show whether onchain settlement credit becomes a durable part of the payments stack.
What happens next
Visa has established a framework and published early scale data, but the next evidence will come from adoption by additional programs and lenders. The useful questions are how financing is priced, which card programs qualify, how much settlement is actually funded through these facilities and whether credit performance changes as the market expands beyond its earliest participants.