How Visa and Mastercard Settle in Stablecoins: 2026 Volumes Explained

Every morning, a card programme in Buenos Aires owes Visa money for the coffees, groceries and taxi rides its customers bought the day before. For most of card history that bill was paid by bank wire, in dollars, on banking days only. Increasingly, it is paid in USDC on a public blockchain, on a Saturday if need be. By April 2026 Visa's stablecoin settlement was running at an annualised $7 billion, up 50% in a single quarter.

That number is still a sliver of Visa's business. It also signals something the payments industry argued about for years: the two biggest card networks are no longer treating stablecoins as a threat to be kept outside, but as a settlement asset to be pulled inside. Here is how it works, who uses it, how Visa and Mastercard differ, and what it changes for card issuers and their customers.

What settlement means, and why it matters

A card payment has three stages. Authorisation happens in a second at the till: the issuer approves or declines. Clearing follows, when transaction details are exchanged. Settlement is the actual movement of money between the card issuer, the network and the merchant's bank, the acquirer. The customer never sees it.

Traditionally, settlement runs through designated banks in fiat currency, follows banking hours and pauses on weekends and holidays. For a crypto card issuer whose customers hold stablecoins, that creates an awkward loop: sell stablecoins for dollars, wire the dollars to a settlement bank, wait. Stablecoin settlement removes the middle step. The issuer pays the network in stablecoins directly, and the network handles conversion for merchants who still want local currency. The merchant at the till in Bogota is paid in pesos exactly as before. We explained the consumer side in how crypto cards work.

Visa's programme: from pilot to $7 billion

Visa began settling with card issuers in USDC in 2023, starting in Latin America, then extended the option to Europe and Asia in 2024 and to regulated US partner banks in late 2025, according to an industry review by Insights4VC. By late 2025 the run rate was about $3.5 billion a year. By 29 April 2026 it was $7 billion, across nine blockchains, as Coin360 reported from Visa's disclosures. Ethereum and Solana are among the named settlement chains. Visa is also working with Circle on Arc, a payments-focused blockchain.

Context matters. Visa processed $14.2 trillion in payment volume in fiscal 2025. Even at $7 billion a year, stablecoin settlement is about 0.05% of that. The growth rate, not the size, is the story.

Visa has also pushed on the issuing side. Stripe-owned Bridge launched Visa stablecoin cards in 18 countries in March 2026, with Argentina, Colombia and Mexico among the first, and plans for more than 100 countries by the end of 2026, as Cointelegraph reported. By June 2026 Visa said it had more than 160 stablecoin-related card programmes live or in development, according to IDN Financials, citing CoinDesk.

Mastercard's approach: networks, credentials and an acquisition

Mastercard has taken a broader, more bank-oriented route. Its Multi-Token Network is a regulated blockchain environment for banks to move tokenised deposits and stablecoins. Its Crypto Credential adds an identity and compliance layer to blockchain transfers. It has run conversion and settlement pilots with Circle and Paxos, and the acquirer Nuvei lets merchants opt in to receive stablecoin settlement. Many of these remain at pilot stage.

The bigger move was corporate. Mastercard announced plans to acquire BVNK, a stablecoin payments infrastructure firm, for up to $1.8 billion, according to Coin360. That gives Mastercard in-house rails for stablecoin pay-ins and payouts, not just card settlement. For banks exploring tokenised money rather than stablecoins, Mastercard's network design is closer to what we describe in tokenised deposits.

Visa is putting stablecoins under its existing card machine. Mastercard is building a second machine for banks beside it.

Visa and Mastercard compared

Who actually uses it: the new card issuers

Most stablecoin settlement is driven by a new type of issuer. Traditionally, fintechs issued cards through a sponsor bank that held network membership. Firms such as Rain and Reap instead hold principal membership with Visa directly, Insights4VC notes. That lets them run compliance, wallet integration and crypto-to-fiat conversion themselves, and keep more of the interchange and FX spread. It also puts more operational risk on their balance sheets.

The volumes are now meaningful. Artemis data, first reported by The Defiant, put crypto card spending at over $1.5 billion a month by late 2025, an $18 billion annual pace, with Visa handling more than 90% of transactions, per a summary carried by MEXC News. Paymentscan data cited by CoinDesk put July 2026 crypto card spending at $1.04 billion, more than triple a year earlier, with dollar stablecoins funding 70% of over 10 million transactions. USDC funded 50.8% of that spending and USDT 20.3%. Measures differ by data provider and by whether they count spending or settlement, so treat any single figure with care. The token mix is covered in USDT vs USDC.

A worked example: the weekend problem

Why would an issuer bother? Consider a mid-sized stablecoin card programme whose customers spend $10 million a week, roughly $1.43 million a day. The figures below are illustrative assumptions.

1. Fiat settlement. The network settles on banking days. Spending from Friday, Saturday and Sunday is settled on Monday, and the issuer must hold enough pre-funded collateral to cover several days of exposure plus a buffer. Say three days: about $4.3 million parked in a settlement account.
2. Stablecoin settlement. Settlement can happen every day, including weekends. Collateral can drop toward one day's exposure: about $1.43 million.
3. Capital freed. Roughly $2.9 million. If that cash earns an assumed 4% a year in short-term government bills, the issuer gains about $114,000 annually, before conversion costs it no longer pays.

For a large bank issuer this is a rounding error. For a young principal member running on venture capital, it is a hire or two. Multiply across hundreds of programmes and it explains why settlement volume doubled in a few months. Issuers earn from interchange and float as well; our explainer on how stablecoin issuers make money covers the economics on the token side.

The worked example uses simplified assumptions for illustration and is not a description of any network's actual collateral requirements.

What it does not change, yet

Three things are worth stating plainly. First, the customer experience is unchanged: cardholders get the same protections and the same chargeback rules on the card transaction. Second, stablecoin settlement is overwhelmingly used by crypto-native issuers. Traditional banks still settle in fiat through existing channels, much as they rely on correspondent banking for cross-border flows. Third, merchants mostly still receive local currency. A shop in Mexico City accepting a stablecoin-funded card gets pesos from its acquirer, not tokens.

What does change is the issuer's treasury. A programme whose customer balances sit in stablecoins can now close the loop without touching the banking system on weekends. That is the wedge. The longer game is whether merchants and acquirers start asking for stablecoin settlement themselves, which would make the card network a translation layer between on-chain money and the old system.

Regulation will shape how far this goes. In the US, the GENIUS Act sets the rules for payment stablecoin issuers; in Europe, MiCA governs which tokens regulated firms can use. Our overview of GENIUS Act and MiCA rules explains the constraints.

The risks issuers take on

Settling in stablecoins swaps one set of risks for another. The first is the token itself. An issuer that holds its settlement collateral in a single stablecoin is exposed if that coin trades below a dollar, even briefly, at the moment a payment is due. Past episodes, covered in our history of stablecoin depegs, show that redemption queues and banking exposures can bite fast. The second is the chain. A congested or halted network on a busy shopping day turns a treasury advantage into a missed settlement window, and a programme spread across several blockchains, as Visa's is, offers some redundancy.

The third risk is regulatory and reputational. A principal member that runs its own compliance stack is answerable directly to the network and to regulators for sanctions screening and fraud controls. One serious lapse can cost a programme its membership. These are manageable risks, but they are real, and they fall on smaller firms than the banks that traditionally carried them.

What to watch next

• Visa fiscal Q4 2026 results, expected late October 2026. The first chance to see whether the stablecoin settlement run rate has moved beyond $7 billion and whether more chains have joined.
• Bridge and Visa card rollout, end-2026 target. The plan to reach more than 100 countries, adding Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, will test demand outside Latin America.
• Mastercard's BVNK deal. Watch for regulatory approvals and closing, and for whether Mastercard begins disclosing stablecoin settlement volumes.
• Monthly crypto card spending data. After July's $1.04 billion, the question is whether growth holds as Visa programmes multiply beyond 160.

The card networks have spent sixty years making settlement invisible. Stablecoins are making it visible again, as a source of speed, float and competition among issuers. The merchants have not noticed. The issuers certainly have.

About this researchMuffinPay InsightsIndependent analysis of stablecoins, CBDCs, cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure. Every figure is linked to its source. Read our editorial standards →