Visa (NYSE: V) says it is modernizing cross-border money movement as it improves its stablecoin settlement capabilities with the Solana blockchain. Simultaneoulsy, Visa reports that it is working with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei.
Visa says it has “moved millions of USDC between its partners on both Solana and Ethereum as it enables dollar settlement over VisaNet.
Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, says that by using USDC, issued by Circle, they are helping improve cross-border settlement efficiency. He adds that Visa is “committed to being on the forefront of digital currency” as they improve the way we move money.
Visa began testing USDC in 2021 with a pilot on Crypto.com. The partnership led to utilizing USDC and Ethereum to receive payments on Crypto.com on their program in Australia. Crypto.com now uses USDC to fulfill its settlement obligations on the Visa card in Australia and intends to roll out this capability in other markets. Prior to the pilot, cross-border settlements could take days.
Circle is excited about USDC use cases with Visa, says Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle.
“Circle built USDC to provide a functional digital dollar that could move at the speed of the internet to facilitate secure, reliable payments. Expanding the pilot exemplifies how pairing USDC with Visa’s innovation opens up the future of payments, commerce and financial applications.”
Using Visa’s own Circle account, the company can now manage settlement payouts in USDC to Worldpay and Nuvei, who can then route these payments in USDC to their end merchants. Visa added Solana due to its high-performance characteristics.
Visa states that the Solana blockchain sees 400 millisecond block times, averages 400 transactions per second (TPS), and typically surges to more than 2K TPS1 across a variety of use cases during periods of peak demand.
Philip Fayer, Chair and CEO of Nuvei, explains that optimizing cross-border transactions is just one example of where stablecoins can benefit businesses.
“As a leading global payments company, we are constantly focused on innovation, and we’re excited to work with Visa to bring these capabilities to our partners.”