Visa announced its next steps in modernizing cross-border money movement on September 5 by extending its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain.

In doing this, Visa is working directly with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei to enhance the efficiency and speed of settlement processes for merchants worldwide to help optimize the often unseen process of transferring funds between banks – specifically, from the issuer’s bank to the acquirer’s bank. 

As a world leader in digital payments, Visa facilitates transactions across more than 200 countries and territories – spanning consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities. 

By leveraging Visa’s own Circle account, it will now be able to manage these settlement payouts in USDC to Worldpay and Nuvei who can then instantaneously route these payments in USDC to their end merchants. Solana’s blockchain averages 400 transactions per second (TPS), while surging to more than 2,000 TPS across a variety of use cases during its peak demand periods. 

“By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve the speed of cross-border settlement and providing a modern option for our clients to easily send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury,” said Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto, Visa.

Two-Year Pilot Program

This announcement comes after a successful two-year pilot program with Crypto.com, where Visa served as one of the first major payment networks to test stablecoin settlement on the issuance side. 

When the pilot first launched in 2021, Visa began testing how USDC could be used inside its treasury operations on its live card program in Australia, allowing it to receive payments from Crypto.com by leveraging USDC and the Ethereum blockchain. This effectively reduced the time in which Visa cards were previously needed requiring a “days-long currency conversion process” and costly international wire transfers. 

Crypto.com now uses USDC to fulfill its settlement obligations on the Visa card in the Australian market with plans to continue rolling out this capability in other markets. 

Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, emphasized the company’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technologies like stablecoins and blockchain networks to enhance the speed and efficiency of cross-border settlements. 

“Visa is committed to being on the forefront of digital currency and blockchain innovation and leveraging these new technologies to help improve the way we move money,” Sheffield stated in the press release. 

Similarly, Philip Fayer, Chair and CEO of Nuvei, emphasized the broad range of applications for stablecoins like USDC, stating that they have the potential to accelerate the growth of online businesses globally. He sees stablecoins as “a cutting-edge payment technology that can optimize cross-border transactions and drive innovation across various sectors.”

By offering support for Solana, Visa positions itself as one of the first major payment companies to directly utilize the network for live settlement payments between its clients.

“Visa’s USDC settlement capability enables Worldpay to bring more of our treasury operations in-house and allows us to offer merchants more choices for receiving funds,” said Jim Johnson, President of Worldpay Merchant Solutions, FIS. 

Fayer also shared his belief that “[o]ptimizing cross-border transactions is only one use case where stablecoins can benefit businesses.”

Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-3.

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