Visa began USDC settlements for US banks and credit unions with Cross River and Lead Bank in Solana. There will be a significant deployment in 2026. Visa, a large corporation that handles payments, has begun to offer USDC settlement services to some banks in the US.
Visa said on Tuesday that US financial institutions can now use its USDC$1 settlement service. Cross River Bank and Lead Bank are the first to adopt it. They are currently settling with Visa in USDC on the Solana blockchain. In 2026, it will be available to more people.
The claim comes after Circle, the firm that makes USDC, opened the public testnet for its layer-1 blockchain Arc in late October. More than 100 well-known companies, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs, signed up for the testnet. Visa said it is a design partner for the network because “it has the performance and scalability needed to help support Visa’s global commercial activity.”
Change or get left behind
Visa said it wants to use Arc to process USDC transactions on its network and run a node on that network. “Financial institutions want faster, programmable settlement options that work well with their current treasury operations,” said Rubail Birwadker, the payment giant’s global head of growth products and strategic alliances.
It looks like Visa is working a lot to help banks and other financial companies adopt stablecoins in their work. On Monday, the company began a global Stablecoins Advisory Practice. This group will help banks, stores, and fintechs create, use, and keep stablecoin solutions running.
Visa declared on November 27 that it would be using stablecoins to make payments across Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa. A cooperation with the cryptocurrency infrastructure firm Aquanow made this feasible. The agreement’s purpose is “to settle transactions using approved stablecoins like USDC, which will lower costs, make things run more smoothly, and speed up settlement times.”
Visa indicated that banks and payment providers wanted the initiative to materialise. But not all Visa stablecoin goods are commercial services.
On November 12, Visa began a test in the US. It lets businesses transmit stablecoin payments tied to the US dollar to user wallets from company accounts that are funded with actual money. In the midst of signing up “select partners,” and the service will be available to more people in 2026.