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Visa, one of the world’s largest payment companies, is all set to support four stablecoins on four different blockchains as it looks to expand its services in the space.
Visa To Expand Stablecoin Support
During Visa’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Ryan McInerney said that it plans to continue expanding its stablecoin services after seeing strong growth over the past year.
“We are adding support for four stablecoins, running on four unique blockchains, representing two currencies, that we can accept and convert to over 25 traditional fiat currencies,” McInerney said.
McInerney noted that spending on Visa cards connected to stablecoins in Q4 was four times higher than it was a year earlier. Visa has also expanded the number of supported stablecoins and blockchains, with monthly transaction volumes now surpassing an annualized rate of $2.5 billion.
$140 Billion in Crypto and Stablecoin Transactions
The company has handled nearly $140 billion in crypto and stablecoin flows since 2020. This includes more than $100 billion from users purchasing crypto and stablecoin assets with their Visa cards.
Visa now supports over 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across more than 40 countries, which highlights its growing presence in the digital payments space.
The company is also enabling banks to mint and burn their own stablecoins with the Visa tokenized asset platform and and plans to add stablecoin capabilities to enhance cross-border money movement with Visa Direct.
This is part of a larger trend where more and more institutions are starting to see the potential of stablecoins and are eager to explore them. In September, Visa announced that it will launch a stablecoin prefunding pilot through Visa Direct, to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more flexible.
Stablecoins and the Future of Lending
Visa shared in a recent report that over the past five years, more than $670 billion stablecoin-denominated loans originated over the last five years, with significant year-over-year growth.
It sees strong potential in stablecoins as “programmable money,” with smart contracts offering new ways to modernize lending and expand global access to credit.
It aims to help its 15,000+ partner banks to better understand the growing stablecoin ecosystem and provide them with the tools and infrastructure to take part in on-chain lending and payments.