Friday , May 22, 2026

Visa Looks to Expansion in Stablecoins And Agentic Commerce

Visa Inc. early Wednesday announced it is expanding support for agent-led commerce to Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, and also said it is widening its venture in stablecoins with the addition of five blockchains, bringing the total to nine.

The five additional blockchains include Arc from Circle Internet Financial, as well as Base from Coinbase, and Canton, Polygon, and Tempo. The move to nine systems comes as Visa’s stablecoin pilot has achieved a run rate of $7 billion in annualized settlement volume, a 50% surge only since the December 2025 quarter, the card network says.

Visa began piloting stablecoins in 2021, significantly expanding the program last year. It recently extended settlement of the stablecoin USDC to nine banks in the U.S. and says it runs more than 130 card programs linked to stablecoins in more than 50 countries. With these developments, as well as the recent addition of blockchains, “stablecoin settlement over blockchain infrastructure is becoming a viable complement to traditional settlement rails,” Visa says.

Visa’s blockchain moves come as the payments network has focused on agentic commerce, the technology that enables AI agents to shop and pay online on behalf of consumers. Its expansion of the program to Asia-Pacific and Latin America follows similar moves in Europe, including the United Kingdom, where Visa says it is in operation with more than 20 banks and issuing partners. In the Asia-Pacific initiative, Visa said it expects to work with more than 85 partners.

“Across markets, we’re seeing growing interest in how AI agents could reshape commerce,” said Rubail Birwadker, senior vice president for growth products & partnerships at Visa, in a statement. The partnerships are helping Visa and participants learn “what works, and ensuring global readiness as these experiences reach scale,” Birwadker adds.

Visa on Tuesday reported $1.79 trillion in U.S. payments volume for the March quarter, an 8% increase year-over-year and 48% of its global volume. The network’s next-largest market, Europe, grew 11%, to $797 billion, for the quarter. The network reported $11.2 billion in net revenue for the March quarter, a 17% increase, with net income of $6 billion, up 32%.

Globally, total credit cards in issue grew 9%, to 1.6 billion, while debit cards increased 4% to 3.5  billion.

Check Also

Lightspeed Segment Revenue Rises as It Narrows Its Loss; MagTek Eases Kiosk Integration with Cutflow

Point-of-sale commerce platform Lightspeed Commerce Inc. added approximately 3,200 new locations in its fiscal fourth …

Digital Transactions