Visa Unveils Stablecoin Platform for Banks and Fintech Companies

Visa has launched a new platform that enables banks, fintechs and payment providers to issue, hold and transfer stablecoins through its payment network.

In a blog post On Thursday, Visa said that the Visa Stablecoin Platform, or VSP for short, includes stablecoin minting, redemption, wallet construction, and asset management in one system. Instead of requiring financial institutions to create themselves blockchain infrastructure, the platform integrates stablecoin operations into existing payments and operational stability.

“Stablecoins are opening up a new avenue of investment possibilities, but for many organizations the challenge is not the idea, it’s the implementation,” Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said in a statement. “With the Visa Stablecoin Platform, we’re giving our customers a single place to create, move, and manage stablecoin transactions with the controls, security, and connectivity they’ve come to expect from Visa.”

As their name suggests, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a fixed value, usually pegged to the US dollar. Together, they grew into a market of about $304 billion, according to CoinGecko.

At launch, the Visa Stablecoin Platform supports Open USD (OUSD), a stablecoin launched by the Open Standard consortium in June, along with Visa’s existing support for Circle’s. USDC and Paxos’ USDG, according to Chance. The platform, which was made available to select beta users, also allows organizations to manage wallets, transfer funds, and integrate existing wallets with payment methods, and integrate approval controls and accounting records.

This article follows Visa’s several forays into the stablecoin market.

In October, the payment giant was published research He says that stablecoins could bring shares of the $40 trillion global loan market to blockchain rail, citing $670 billion in stablecoin lending over the past five years.

In March, Visa became the first payment company to join Canton Network as a Super Validator, a service that aims to help banks use stable currencies for payments, stability and financial services on a private blockchain network.

In April, Visa to be expanded its stablecoin program by adding Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo, bringing the total number of supported blockchain networks to nine. At the time, the company reported that its annual stablecoin revenue reached $7 billion and supported more than 130 stablecoin compatible card programs across 50 plus countries.