Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains

Visa announced on April 29, 2026 that it was adding five blockchain networks to its global stablecoin settlement pilot, increasing the number of supported networks from four to nine. The expansion brought Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo alongside the pilot’s existing support for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar.

The payments company also reported that the pilot had reached a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, 50% higher than in the preceding quarter. That company-reported measure was the clearest indication available on April 29 that stablecoins were moving from isolated payment experiments into the treasury operations connecting card issuers, acquirers and Visa.

What Visa actually expanded

The development concerned settlement between participating institutions and Visa, not a wholesale conversion of ordinary card purchases into blockchain transactions. Issuers and acquirers in the pilot could use supported stablecoins and blockchain networks to satisfy settlement obligations that would otherwise be handled through conventional bank money and payment infrastructure.

Visa’s earlier U.S. rollout illustrates the distinction. On December 16, 2025, the company said select U.S. issuers and acquirers could settle VisaNet obligations using Circle’s USDC. Cross River Bank and Lead Bank were identified as initial participants using Solana. Visa said the structure did not change the consumer’s card experience.

The five additions represented different approaches to blockchain settlement. Base and Polygon were public networks designed for relatively inexpensive, high-throughput transactions. Arc and Tempo were built with payments and stablecoin activity as central use cases. Canton emphasized configurable privacy and controls intended for regulated financial institutions. Visa was therefore supporting several competing infrastructure models rather than selecting one chain as a universal rail.

Why the expansion mattered

Payment settlement is less visible than trading or consumer wallets, but it is where financial institutions manage funding, reconciliation and counterparty obligations. Blockchain settlement can operate outside traditional banking hours, potentially allowing participating firms to move funds on weekends and holidays. It can also create new operational requirements involving custody, wallet controls, compliance and liquidity across several networks.

Visa’s move was significant because it connected those blockchain systems to an established global payment network. Polygon separately confirmed on April 29 that Visa partners could use its network for stablecoin settlement. Contemporaneous reporting from The Block also recorded the five additions and the nine-network total.

The announcement did not mean all Visa volume was settling in stablecoins. It described a pilot available to participating issuers and acquirers. Visa also said it had more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in over 50 countries, but those card programs were not necessarily participants in the settlement pilot and should not be counted as evidence of $7 billion in settlement activity.

Reading the $7 billion figure carefully

An annualized run rate converts activity over a shorter recent period into a one-year pace. It is not the same as confirming that $7 billion had settled during the preceding twelve months. Visa characterized the increase as 50% from the prior quarter but did not disclose the exact observation dates, raw quarterly totals, participating institutions, stablecoin composition or volume allocated to each blockchain.

The figure was also supplied by Visa rather than calculated from a public blockchain dataset. Transfers visible on public networks would not necessarily identify which transactions represented Visa settlement, while activity on privacy-oriented infrastructure may not be publicly attributable at all. Coinburn therefore treats the number as a verified company disclosure, not an independently reproduced market measurement.

What remained unresolved

As of April 29, 2026, the strongest conclusion was that Visa had broadened its institutional stablecoin pilot and reported material growth in its annualized settlement pace. The announcement did not establish the pilot’s profitability, disclose its share of Visa’s total settlement volume or demonstrate that every newly supported network was already carrying substantial Visa-related activity.

Further verification required later disclosures showing actual transaction totals, active participants, supported stablecoins and production volume by network. Those questions remained open in the event-day record.