Visa Moves Massive Stablecoin Payments Pilot Into Production Phase

Visa Direct Stablecoin Capabilities Go Into Production Phase

Visa has entered a new phase in its digital assets adoption, introducing stablecoin capabilities to institutional partners by moving its payments pilot into a production phase.

On Thursday, the company announced that it had reached a milestone in enabling stablecoin payments in real-world commercial applications, bringing its Visa Direct capabilities to market in partnership with Inyo Global, a Massachusetts-based payments infrastructure company.

Inyo Global would serve as a key middleman, allowing other companies to harness Visa Direct to prefund payouts 24/7 with $USDC, manage liquidity more efficiently, and leverage Inyo’s rails to complete their operations.

As explained by Visa, Visa Direct enables fiat-to-stablecoin cross-border payments, with recipients receiving dollar-pegged assets in real time in markets where payment infrastructure lags, offering predictable settlement values even outside normal banking hours.

Global Head of Visa Direct Vira Platonova highlighted in a statement that the next chapter for stablecoins was adoption, and that the company had been working with several partners to explore seamless stablecoin integration in their money platforms.

“We’re now seeing those efforts translate into live implementations, helping businesses access more flexible and efficient ways to fund and move money globally through Visa Direct, starting with Inyo Global as our first enabler,” said Platonova.

The rollout will power cross-border payments in over 180 countries where Inyo Global operates.

Robson Dantas, chief product and technology officer and co-founder at Inyo Global, stressed that the implementation would let institutional customers test the advantages of using stablecoins for these tasks. “By integrating Visa Direct’s stablecoin-enabled prefunding into the Inyo platform, we’re giving the money transmitters, fintechs, and payment companies we serve a new way to fund their payouts, one that is available around the clock and runs through the same Inyo APIs they already use,” Dantas declared.

Visa has been approaching stablecoins for some time. It recently reported that stablecoin settlements on its network reached a $20 billion annualized run rate, a 15x increase from the levels registered a year before.

In September, the credit giant also completed its first stablecoin settlement with Lloyds Banking Group, receiving $750K in $USDC from the bank in a seven-day pilot that operated when traditional banks are closed.