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Visa Inc. is setting the stage for stablecoin settlement in a partnership with Brale, whose technology enables businesses to introduce and operate digital currencies backed by fiat money. The collaboration, announced early Thursday, will allow the card network to test settlement with Brale’s SBC, a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar, in an effort to determine whether to add the coin as a settlement alternative, according to the companies’ joint statement.
The venture will depend on the Canton Network, a public blockchain launched in 2023 to allow financial institutions to connect traditional and decentralized finance while maintaining users’ privacy, a key factor for the initiative at a time when most blockchain data are public.
Indeed, the project, which the parties call a proof of concept, is intended to show whether blockchains can process transactions while at the same time managing the privacy of transaction data, the participants say. In this regard, Canton’s privacy technology is a “central focus,” the parties say. “Unlike many public blockchain networks, Canton is designed to allow participants to transact on shared infrastructure while limiting the visibility of sensitive transaction information,” reads the announcement.
This is a tricky initiative on technology like blockchain, which by design is intended to be open, the participants acknowledge. “Stablecoin settlement has shown how blockchain infrastructure can improve the speed and efficiency of money movement,” Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, says in a statement. “Through our work with Brale, we’re exploring how SBC on the Canton Network can support institutional settlement use cases that require both programmability and privacy controls. This collaboration helps us evaluate what it takes to bring these capabilities into production environments.”
The future of stablecoins in sensitive areas of finance may hinge on such tests. “Financial institutions are increasingly looking for stablecoin infrastructure that meets their operational, regulatory, and privacy requirements,” says Brale founder and chief executive Ben Milne, formerly chief executive of the payments platform Dwolla, in a statement.
In related news, Bybit, a digital-currency exchange, has become the first major exchange to join the USDPT stablecoin network from The Western Union Co., according to an announcement Thursday. Through the move, users of Western Union can use Bybit’s fiat services to gain access to USDPT on the Solana blockchain.
“Making USDPT available through a leading global exchange like Bybit is a meaningful step in extending Western Union’s network into the digital-asset ecosystem,” says Malcolm Clarke, head of digital assets at Western Union, in a statement. Western Union launched the stablecoin May 4.
