Visa and Bridge planned stablecoin-linked cards in more than 100 countries

Visa and Bridge, the stablecoin-infrastructure company owned by Stripe, announced on March 3, 2026 that their stablecoin-linked card program was planned to expand from 18 countries to more than 100 across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East by the end of 2026.

The announcement mattered because it joined blockchain-based balances to an established retail-payment interface. Instead of requiring a merchant to accept a particular token or operate a crypto wallet, Bridge’s clients could issue branded Visa cards that let customers fund ordinary purchases from stablecoin balances.

The development was partly operational and partly prospective. Visa said Bridge-enabled cards were already live in 18 countries. The wider geographic reach remained a plan, not a completed rollout, and the companies did not publish a country-by-country schedule or adoption figures.

How the card structure worked

Bridge provided the infrastructure through which fintech developers and wallet companies could issue and manage stablecoin-linked cards. Visa supplied the payment network. Phantom and MetaMask were among the platforms Visa identified as using the cards.

The consumer-facing transaction did not require a shop to receive stablecoins. In the product structure Visa and Bridge initially documented in April 2025, Bridge deducted the required amount from the cardholder’s stablecoin balance and converted it into fiat currency so the merchant could receive local money through familiar card rails. The March 3 expansion extended that model rather than replacing Visa acceptance with direct wallet-to-merchant blockchain transfers.

Visa said the cards could be used at more than 175 million merchant locations. That figure was Visa’s network-wide company estimate, not a count of merchants that had independently chosen to accept stablecoins. It described the potential acceptance footprint of a Visa credential, subject to ordinary card acceptance, jurisdictional availability and program controls.

The distinction is important. A stablecoin-funded card can make digital dollars easier to spend without changing what the merchant receives or moving the retail purchase itself entirely onto a public blockchain. Bridge handled conversion and orchestration behind the card experience.

A separate test of onchain settlement

The March 3 announcement also placed Bridge and its banking partner, Lead Bank, inside Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot. That initiative examined whether participating issuers and acquirers could settle obligations to Visa using supported stablecoins and blockchain networks instead of relying exclusively on conventional bank transfers.

Visa described the pilot as an evaluation of settlement choice, faster movement of funds, onchain reconciliation and the role of infrastructure providers in simplifying institutional blockchain use. Those were test objectives rather than verified performance results. Neither Visa nor Bridge disclosed settlement volume, transaction counts, cost savings, supported-chain usage or a production timetable on March 3.

The card rollout and settlement pilot therefore addressed different layers. Stablecoin funding concerned how a cardholder supplied value for a purchase. Institutional settlement concerned how participating financial companies discharged obligations within the Visa system. The announcement did not establish that every Bridge-enabled card transaction was settled onchain.

Why the expansion mattered

Stablecoins had often been presented as an alternative to card networks. The Visa-Bridge model instead treated them as a funding and settlement component that could be attached to existing merchant acceptance. That made the development institutionally significant: a major card network was integrating blockchain infrastructure into its established distribution system rather than requiring consumers and merchants to abandon it.

The limits were equally material. More than 100 countries was a year-end target, not an event-day footprint. The announcement supplied no active-card count, purchase volume, stablecoin breakdown, fee comparison or evidence that onchain settlement improved outcomes. The next verifiable milestones were named market launches, regulatory availability, production settlement records and independently measurable usage.