Visa Expands to Nine Chains: Stablecoins Are Quietly Taking Over the Settlement Layer

What happened

On April 29, Visa announced the addition of five blockchains—Arc (Circle's L1), Base (Coinbase-powered), Canton (institutional-grade with configurable privacy), Polygon, and Tempo—to its stablecoin settlement pilot. Combined with existing support for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar, Visa now operates across nine chains, giving issuers and acquirers far more optionality. The pilot's annualized settlement run rate reached $7 billion, up 50% from the prior quarter, while Visa's stablecoin-linked card programs now exceed 130 across more than 50 countries.

Polygon emerges as the payments chain

Polygon's metrics, cited by Visa, are striking. The chain processes 34% of all USD-stablecoin transfers, 54% of USDC transfers (more than all other chains combined), and 36% of global USDC transactions. Weekly active stablecoin users sit at roughly 3.19 million, with on-chain stablecoin supply at $3.62 billion and 178.1 million USD-stablecoin transactions recorded in March alone. This is no longer a "general-purpose L2" story—it is a payments-specialist L2 winning the cross-border settlement race.

Where the broader market stands

Total stablecoin supply hit $315 billion in Q1 2026. Quarterly transfer volume reached $28 trillion, exceeding Visa and Mastercard combined. USDT remains dominant at roughly $187 billion (~60% share), but USDC has surged 220% since late 2023 to about $78 billion, driven by institutional B2B flows and programmatic integrations with Visa and Stripe. The U.S. GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, established federal rules requiring 1:1 reserves, monthly disclosures, and OCC supervision, with stablecoin-holder priority in insolvency. Combined with Mastercard's BVNK acquisition (up to $1.8B) and Stripe's Bridge acquisition ($1.1B), Visa's move marks the moment when card networks formally absorb stablecoins into their settlement layer rather than treating them as a competitive threat. Japan's JPYC, launched October 27, 2025, also runs on Polygon—an alignment with global rails that has strategic implications.

[Business Development Insights]

1. Multi-chain has become a hard requirement, not a preference. Single-chain optimization is over. Companies building payment products, treasury tools, or card-issuing platforms should invest in chain-agnostic abstraction layers (wallets, SDKs, compliance tooling). Visa's positioning as a "common settlement layer" reduces chain-selection risk for everyone downstream.
2. Design products around the de facto Polygon + USDC standard. With 54% of USDC transfers happening on Polygon, B2B cross-border payments and merchant payouts should treat Polygon + USDC as the default rail. Combining JPY⇄USDC on/off-ramp providers (SBI×Circle) with Polygon-compatible JPY stablecoins like JPYC creates a viable "JPY-invoiced, USD-settled" hybrid model.
3. The card × stablecoin land grab is in its final innings. Mastercard (BVNK), Stripe (Bridge), and Visa (Bridge partnership + own pilot) are competing for the last seats at the back-end settlement table. Japanese players still have a window to position as aggregators across domestic infrastructure (JPYC, Progmat Coin, SBI×Startale's JPYSC launching Q2 2026) or to operate cross-border corridors within Asia-Pacific.

[Sources]

• Visa press release (April 29, 2026): https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/newsroom/visa-expands-stablecoin-settlement-adds-five-blockchains.html
• CoinPost (original article): https://coinpost.ai/ja/topics/104405
• CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/04/29/visa-expands-stablecoin-settlement-network-as-volume-hits-usd7-billion-run-rate
• PYMNTS: https://www.pymnts.com/visa/2026/visa-adds-5-blockchains-as-stablecoin-settlement-volume-surges/
• Bitcoin.com News (Polygon metrics): https://news.bitcoin.com/visa-scales-stablecoin-rails-to-nine-networks-as-partners-cite-real-world-demand/
• Stablecoin Insider Q1 2026 Report: https://stablecoininsider.org/q1-2026-stablecoin-report/
• KuCoin (market sizing, USDC growth): https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/stablecoin-supply-reaches-315b-in-q1-2026-as-usdc-surpasses-usdt-in-growth
• Standard Chartered forecast (CoinDesk): https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/02/23/u-s-treasury-may-boost-t-bill-issuance-as-stablecoins-eye-usd2-trillion-market-cap-stanchart
• White House GENIUS Act fact sheet: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-signs-genius-act-into-law/
• NRI (Japan stablecoin regulation): https://www.nri.com/jp/media/column/kiuchi/20250905_2.html