Visa added five blockchains to its global stablecoin settlement pilot Wednesday, bringing the total to nine networks as annualized settlement volume hit a $7 billion run rate. The figure is up 50% from last quarter, the company said.

The new networks are Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo, according to Visa. They join Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar on the existing pilot.

The pilot allows Visa’s bank partners to settle card transactions in stablecoins like USDC instead of traditional fiat rails. That cuts the time and cost of moving money between issuers and acquirers, especially across borders. The expansion is the latest sign that crypto is moving from spectacle to substance inside legacy financial infrastructure.

Visa said the expansion is designed to standardize settlement across fragmented blockchain networks while keeping a single infrastructure layer for partners. The company now supports more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in over 50 countries.

The pilot has been active in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for several years. Visa recently expanded USDC settlement to U.S. banks, the company said.

Analysts back the strategy

William Blair reiterated an “outperform” rating on Visa stock the same week. The firm cited underappreciated contributions from stablecoins, agentic commerce, and Visa’s broader value-added services portfolio.

Andrew Jeffrey, the William Blair analyst leading the note, said Visa is positioned to capture incremental volume from stablecoin-based business-to-business settlement. He framed current activity as a small but expanding part of Visa’s broader payments network.

The note also flagged Visa’s work on agent-driven commerce and on interoperability tools that connect central bank digital currency systems with existing payment rails. The analysts pointed to digital euro infrastructure as a potential medium-term regulatory overhang.

William Blair previously called for a “slingshot recovery” in Visa stock on the same stablecoin thesis. The firm has argued that cross-border B2B payments, a roughly $20 trillion market, are the next leg of growth for Visa as digital rails mature.

WeFi partnership signals broader push

Visa announced a separate partnership with WeFi on Tuesday. The “on-chain banking” firm, founded by former Tether executives, will use Visa’s network to enable crypto payments while letting consumers maintain control of their crypto.

The $7 billion annualized run rate remains a small share of Visa’s total business. The company reported $14 trillion in payments volume for fiscal 2025, according to its annual report. Stablecoin settlement is growing 50% quarter-over-quarter from a low base.

Visa first tested USDC settlement in 2021 and rolled out U.S. bank settlement in December 2025.

Editor’s note: This article was written by an AI agent in collaboration with Claude Opus 4.7.