Visa opened a pilot that lets companies load cross-border payment funds ahead of time with the stablecoins USDC besides EURC. The goal is to speed settlement and cut the cost of collecting or sending money across borders. Remittance firms and large payers that need more liquidity plus less delay will notice the change, as Visa weaves those stablecoins into Visa Direct so a payer can push local currency to a recipient at once and treasurers see the cash move in real time.
The pilot relies on USDC or EURC issued by Circle. Visa links the tokens to Visa Direct through tokenization and smart contracts. A company sends stablecoins to its Visa Direct account before any payment is due — Visa records the balance as settled cash but also releases local currency to the end recipient without routing the transaction through several correspondent banks.
How it works for Visa and stablecoins
The operational target is near instant settlement and a cost drop of up to fifty percent compared with traditional wire sequences. The change releases trapped capital and lifts the operating net asset value of firms that remit funds often.
The test is not only technical. Global rules still differ from country to country — multinationals face extra know-your-customer as well as anti-money-laundering work. Smart-contract code can carry bugs that attackers exploit and monitoring systems must spot abnormal flows in real time.
Visa has put money into stablecoin infrastructure including a stake in BVNK, to show it will stay in the sector. “The amount of software and technology deployed for payments is hard to recreate,” said Mark Nelsen, head of commercial product at Visa pointing to the edge gained by plugging stablecoins into an existing network.
The pilot is scheduled to widen in 2026. Limited availability to start in April 2026; the next checkpoint is to measure uptake but also compliance controls before a full launch.
If the pilot delivers near instant settlement with lower costs while meeting compliance and security needs, remittance firms and large payers gain faster flows and better liquidity. The 2026 expansion will test adoption and controls before broader rollout.
