Visa Joins the Crypto Rush, Testing Stablecoin Cross-Border Payments

Visa is joining the stablecoin bandwagon by launching a crypto-prefunding pilot for Visa Direct, the company’s real-time digital payment service. Through the pilot, select partners and investors will be able to facilitate instant cross-border payments and improve liquidity management by using USDC and EURC as pre-funded assets.

The news was announced at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, a conference dedicated to global financial security and innovation. Visa appears to be serious about the new functionality. In fact, the project is expected to become an established payment method in the US by April 2026, albeit with limited availability at first.

What Is It?

For years, businesses have been constrained by legacy systems, slow settlement cycles, and the need to lock up capital in fiat accounts in advance. It regularly takes hours or sometimes even days for money to travel across the world. By integrating stablecoins as a cross-border funding mechanism, Visa sets its sights on reducing friction, freeing up liquidity, and making cross-border payouts more responsive to real-time demands. On top of that, the funds sent from one business to another should be available within minutes.

How will it work in practice? Instead of holding their fiat currency and maintaining large balances in multiple jurisdictions, businesses will be able to pre-fund their Visa Direct transactions with stablecoins. They can then facilitate large payments via USDC and EURC, but the recipients will receive money in their local currencies. It’s the same as putting the money in the bank, only faster, more efficient, and allowing banks and businesses to use stablecoins for global payouts and liquidity improvements.

No one said it better than Chris Newkirk, President, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa: “Cross-border payments have been stuck in outdated systems for far too long. Visa Direct’s new stablecoins integration lays the groundwork for money to move instantly across the world, giving businesses more choice in how they pay.”

PayPal, Swift, and More

Visa is not the only one pushing the envelope on stablecoin cross-border payments. Earlier this year, PayPal introduced the Pay with Crypto checkout tool for users in the US, supporting over 100 crypto tokens and not just stablecoins. The company took it a step further and enabled seamless integration with leading cryptocurrency wallets, such as Coinbase and MetaMask.

In a similar vein, Swift announced plans to build a blockchain settlement system for facilitating 24/7 real-time cross-border payments. The list of Swift collaborators on the project includes Ethereum developer Consensys, who’s been tasked with coming up with the initial prototype and laying the groundwork for later developments, and over 30 financial institutions worldwide.

Banks themselves are exploring the possibility of blockchain-based financial services. J.P. Morgan created a blockchain-based payment network, Kinexys, to streamline corporate US dollar transactions. Latest reports from the Middle East indicate that the Qatar National Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, adopted Kinexys and is capable of processing international payments in under two minutes.

GENIUS Act, in the Flesh

Of course, the recent stablecoin innovation rush (including Visa’s own) didn’t come out of the blue. It’s been catalyzed by the GENIUS Act, a piece of legislation which brought regulatory clarity and cross-border efficiency to stablecoin usage in the US by defining standards for transparency and reserve backing.

Visa’s stablecoin prefunding pilot is a real-world test of its merits performed under a controlled, compliant framework. It has allowed large financial institutions to experiment with next-gen global payment solutions and jump straight to the forefront of the crypto revolution. Moreover, for casino players, it’s a potential infrastructure shift that could streamline how crypto-based platforms and international casinos move value. And we’re only at the start of it.