Cards giant Visa has said that stablecoins can make the future of cross-border payments flexible and faster. On Tuesday, September 30 Visa announced that it is launching a pilot trial focused on letting businesses experiment if stablecoins could improve treasury operations with better liquidity provisions.
At the ongoing SIBOS 2025 conference in Germany, the company announced the pilot of its Visa Direct payments platform. It said that the pilot is aimed at testing how stablecoins can improve global payouts for big corporations, banks, and fintech firms.
“Cross-border payments have been stuck in outdated systems for far too long.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,” said Chris Newkirk, President, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions, Visa.
As part of the pilot, select banks, remitters, and financial institutions will be allowed to pre-fund their respective Visa Direct accounts with stablecoins instead of fiat to cover payouts. The recipients of these payouts will get their funds in the local currency.
The company plans to include more entities to experiment with the feature in 2026, its official announcement noted.
“By combining the scale and trust of Visa’s global network with the programmability of blockchain and by partnering with leading payment providers on prefunding use cases, Visa is helping modernize cross-border payments for businesses, financial institutions and consumers worldwide,” the company noted.
Visa, in recent times, has accelerated efforts to become part of the booming $2 trillion stablecoin market. In the second quarter of this year, Visa’s Q2 revenue hit $10.17 billion, out of which stablecoin settlements recently roped-in $200 million for the company.