On October 16, 2025, Visa published a paper outlining Onchain Finance, a blueprint for the basic parts that let credit grow on public and private blockchains. The company positions itself as a vendor of data, rule-checking tools, and final payment rails—without handing out loans. The goal is to link regular money to blockchain loan pools so large institutions lend faster and settle payments with fewer delays.
Visa describes Onchain Finance as the next stage of DeFi, rebuilt so big institutions feel safe to use it. The system relies on stable assets and works across many chains, aiming to make credit origination, servicing, and settlement auditable and compliant.
Stablecoins moved about $33 trillion in total transactions, with a $6.6 trillion yearly run rate in April 2025 after removing wash trades, meaning $20–$30 billion of real payments ride on chain each day. Visa says those numbers topped the combined 2024 volume of Visa and Mastercard.
Visa already settles customer payments in USDC, PYUSD, USDG, or EURC on Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar and keeps a multi-chain setup to cut foreign exchange fees and finish settlements in seconds. It will not mint new tokens and will not act as a lender.
Onchain Finance: the key part of the blueprint
Visa sells only the “pipes”: raw transaction data, ready-made compliance kits, and a dashboard that flags real commerce and screens out speculative loops. Banks and private credit funds feed money into on chain loan pools without facing the wild risks that now haunt open crypto markets.
Onchain Finance is the bundle of services and rules that lets big players carry out and record loans, repayments, and settlements on a blockchain while meeting full audit and compliance standards.
Key points are clear: Visa sells rails, not loans; stablecoins plus cross-chain settlement form the base for bigger on chain credit books; institutional loan protocols receive packaged data and compliance help; and Layer 2 networks or Solana serve as the first speed-and-cost testbeds.
Visa’s paper signals a move from pilots to production-grade credit plumbing. The next step is to run the settlement platform with several stablecoins on Layer 2 and Solana and to plug banks in as liquidity suppliers for the loan pools.
