Visa (V) is diving deeper into crypto to boost the speed of cross-border payment transactions with the expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana (SOL) blockchain. According to a statement Tuesday, Visa is one of the first major financial institutions to use the Solana network at scale for settlements. The payments company has also started pilot programs with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei, allowing their clients to choose USDC stablecoin settlement instead of receiving fiat currencies.
By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve the speed of cross-border settlement and providing a modern option for our clients to easily send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury, said Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa.
The development is another milestone for traditional financial institutions leveraging blockchain technology. Research firm Bernstein has estimated that the stablecoin market can potentially grow to $2.8 trillion in the next five years. Stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies with prices pegged to an external asset, predominantly to the U.S. dollar, and increasingly used for remittances and savings vehicles in developing regions.