Visa has announced that it is expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain. Visa has completed real-world pilot tests with issuers and acquirers, allowing for the frictionless movement of millions of USDC stablecoin tokens across the Solana and Ethereum blockchain networks. These transactions were carried out to settle fiat currency-based payments authorized through VisaNet.
In the most recent release, Visa confirmed collaboration with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei. In 2021, the company began investigating the function of USDC in its treasury operations, which led to a trial with Crypto.com, making it one of the largest payment networks to experiment with stablecoin settlements from the issuer’s perspective.
This study resulted in a successful pilot using USDC and the Ethereum blockchain to collect payments from Crypto.com for cross-border transactions inside their active card program in Australia.
The pilot virtually removed the time-consuming and costly procedure of conversions and international wire transfers for cross-border purchases using Crypto.com Visa cards. As a result, Crypto.com has switched to USDC to meet its Visa card settlement responsibilities in Australia.
Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s Head of Crypto, commented on the development, saying, “By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve cross-border settlement speed and providing a modern option for our clients to send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury easily.” Visa is committed to being at the forefront of digital currency and blockchain innovation and leveraging these new technologies to help improve how we move money.” Visa’s rationale for partnering with Solana was the growing demand for newer, high-performance blockchains that can send and receive stablecoins at higher speeds and lower costs. With this initiative, Visa has become one of the first large-scale payment businesses to use layer 1 blockchain for live settlement payments between its clients.
Meanwhile, the Solana network has seen consistent gains in performance and reliability, with more than six months of uninterrupted service and 100% uptime since February.
