Visa Adds More Stablecoin Features, Unveiling Avalanche, Stellar Support

Visa said Thursday it will expand its stablecoin settlement capabilities, adding support for three additional digital tokens and two new blockchain networks.

The payments giant said that its infrastructure now supports PayPal’s PYUSD, Paxos-issued USDG, and Circle's EURC. 

Visa also said that clients using Visa's stablecoin services can accept the tokens via Avalanche and Stellar, too. 

Previously, Visa's stablecoin services were limited to blockchains Ethereum and Solana. 

Avalanche is a crypto network behind AVAX, the 22nd largest digital asset by market cap, and Stellar's native token, XLM, is the industry's 16th biggest crypto.

AVAX was recently trading for $22.59, down more than 2.4% on the day, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. XLM remained unchanged at $0.40. 

NYSE-listed Visa's stock, meanwhile, finished the day down by 1.5%, according to Google Finance data.

"We believe that when stablecoins are trusted, scalable, and interoperable, they can fundamentally transform how money moves around the world," Visa's Global Head of Growth Products and Strategic Partnerships at Visa, Rubail Birwadker, said in a statement. 

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies typically pegged to stable assets such as the U.S. dollar to minimize price volatility.

They were initially used primarily by traders to move funds without relying on traditional banks.

But now, banks, major companies—including Meta and Amazon, reportedly—and even U.S. states are all interested in issuing stablecoins, which are supposed to accelerate payments using blockchain technology. 

Earlier this month, President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, marking the first comprehensive federal framework for the issuance and regulation of stablecoins in the U.S.

The legislation outlines requirements for issuers, sets standards for reserves and audits, and establishes clear rules for how stablecoins can be used and traded across financial markets.

In 2021, Visa announced that it supported USD Coin on Ethereum. 

Since then, the company has introduced a number of other crypto-related ventures.

In April, it partnered with Bridge, a unit of payment services provider Stripe, to offer stablecoin-linked debit cards in Latin American countries.