Visa expands its USDC stablecoin settlements to Solana, partnering with Worldpay and Nuvei for pilots, and has already moved millions of USDC via VisaNet

- Visa expanded its USDC stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana, forming partnerships with Worldpay and Nuvei for pilot programs.

The Block 2023-09-05 Vishal Chawla

Context & Ripple Effects

Visa had already tested USDC settlement on its network through a Crypto.com pilot, following its earlier effort to connect merchants to Circle's stablecoin. This expansion adds Solana as another settlement rail while keeping VisaNet at the center of transaction processing.

The move also connects to Solana's prior merchant-payments push through Solana Pay. Bringing Worldpay and Nuvei into pilots shifts the test from network capability toward payment-processor implementation.

First-order effects

Visa can settle participating obligations in USDC over Solana, while Worldpay and Nuvei test the operational flow with their own payment businesses.
Solana gains a payments-network use case, and Visa's reported movement of millions of USDC shows the program has progressed beyond a purely announced capability.

Second-order effects

Acquirers and payment processors evaluating stablecoin settlement now have a Visa-integrated reference path rather than needing to build a wholly separate blockchain workflow.
The pilots put more emphasis on the practical trade-off captured by Visa's later stablecoin platform effort: making blockchain settlement usable through existing financial-institution distribution and controls.

Third-order effects

If processors can operationalize these pilots, stablecoins may increasingly function as behind-the-scenes settlement infrastructure rather than a consumer-facing payment choice.
The durable competitive question becomes which networks and stablecoins can meet the policy, integration, and reliability requirements of incumbent payment rails; these pilots alone do not establish broad adoption.

The trend: Card networks are testing stablecoins as programmable settlement rails that extend, rather than replace, established payment-network distribution and controls.

Discussion

@jerallaire Jeremy Allaire on x
Another big move. @visa expands adoption of $USDC into merchant settlement network, enabling acquirers to receive and settle natively in USDC. This is a big deal.
@cuysheffield @cuysheffield on x
1/ We are excited to announce that Visa has expanded our stablecoin settlement capabilities to merchant acquirers launching pilots with @Worldpay_Global and @Nuvei utilizing the Solana blockchain https://www.businesswire.com/ ...
@cuysheffield @cuysheffield on x
4/ In 2021, we began testing how we could use USDC inside our treasury operations leading to a live pilot with @cryptocom where we now accept settlement payments for their card program in Australia over the Ethereum blockchain to a Visa managed Circle account.
@cuysheffield @cuysheffield on x
9/ It's still early days, but Visa has already settled millions of dollars of USDC over the Ethereum and Solana blockchains between our clients. We are committed to continuing to innovate around how we move money and providing our clients modern options for settlement [video]
@cuysheffield @cuysheffield on x
2/ When a consumer uses a Visa card to make a purchase at a merchant, they experience the convenience of instant payment authorizations. What they don't see is that the value for their purchase needs to move between their bank (the issuer) and the merchant's bank (the acquirer).

Chronicles