Visa has chosen United Kingdom‑based stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK to power new Visa Direct pilots, allowing some business customers to pre‑fund cross‑border payouts in stablecoins and deliver digital US dollars directly to recipients’ wallets in select markets.
The partnership, announced Wednesday, builds on Visa’s earlier stablecoin experiments, including onchain settlement tests with USDC on networks like Ethereum and Solana.
The move follows a strategic investment in BVNK in May 2025 through its Visa Ventures arm, as card schemes race to embed tokenized dollars into their treasury and payout rails.
Citi Ventures also took a stake in BVNK in October 2025, as part of Wall Street’s broader push into stablecoin infrastructure, joining Visa Ventures among the startup’s backers.
Visa executives framed the move as part of a long‑running push to modernize money movement with new rails that work outside bank operating hours, calling stablecoins “an exciting opportunity for global payments.”
A spokesperson from BVNK told Cointelegraph that the company has “a great relationship with Visa,” but that this initiative was “a competitive tender,” showing BVNK to be “best in class and winning the race in this competitive space.”
They added that Visa and BVNK have a “shared understanding of the enormous potential of stablecoins to reduce friction and expand access to faster, more efficient payment options.”
Related: BVNK raises $50M to expand into US stablecoin market
Coinbase $2 billion deal collapse
The deal marks a rapid return to the spotlight for BVNK after Coinbase and the startup mutually agreed not to proceed with a proposed $2 billion acquisition in November last year following due diligence.
At the time, BVNK was positioned as a way for Coinbase to boost stablecoin-related revenue and compete as Wall Street companies and major payment networks such as Western Union, MoneyGram and SWIFT ramped up their own stablecoin strategies.
The BVNK spokesperson said the company was currently working on pilot programs with “a limited set of Visa Direct enterprise clients in high-demand markets,” but that the wider roadmap included “expansion to additional corridors, currencies, stablecoins, and customer segments based on regulatory approval and customer demand.”
Related: Stablecoin card adoption will be a ‘big theme’ of 2026: Dragonfly exec
Stablecoins’ growing footprint
Stablecoins have become one of crypto’s largest segments, with global market capitalization around $280 billion as of late 2025, according to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) latest Financial Stability Review.
International Monetary Fund analysis estimates that global stablecoin transaction volumes have already reached the $3 trillion–$4 trillion range annually, highlighting their growing role in cross‑border payments and trading.
A further joint report by onchain analysis platforms Artemis and Dune showed that active stablecoin wallets increased by over 50% in one year, from February 2024 to February 2025.
Regulation, CLARITY Act and stablecoin rewards
BVNK’s new mandate with Visa falls directly into an evolving policy landscape, as regulators, including the ECB, warn that rapidly growing stablecoin usage could pose spillover risks to bank funding even while promising lower‑friction global payments and remittances.
In the United States, lawmakers are still haggling over the CLARITY Act and related market structure proposals, with recent drafts on stablecoin rewards helping to determine how far regulated companies like Visa and BVNK can go in offering yield or reward features on top of otherwise payment‑focused stablecoin products.
The BVNK spokesperson said that stablecoin payouts are “restricted to compliant wallets and counterparties,” and “designed to align with evolving frameworks,” such as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation, and the UK and US regulatory regimes.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight
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Author: Christina Comben
