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Visa Bets on Stablecoins and AI for the Future of Payments

Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement and linking payments to AI agents. The combination is meant to make transactions faster, safer, and scalable worldwide.

By Mike Hesp
• 2 min read
Visa Bets on Stablecoins and AI for the Future of Payments

Key Takeaways

  • Visa sees stablecoins as important for the global payments infrastructure and wants to use them safely at scale.
  • The company is expanding stablecoin settlements and building tokenization technology for programmable digital money.
  • Visa is working with AI and OpenAI on agentic commerce, with fraud monitoring and user controls.

Visa is highlighting the growing role of stablecoins in the global payments infrastructure during its annual forum. According to Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa, stablecoins are transforming the back-end of payments, while AI is reshaping the front end of commerce. Visa is focused on making these changes safe, reliable, and scalable worldwide.

Expanding Stablecoin Settlement and Tokenization

Visa is expanding its pilots for stablecoin settlements across multiple regions, blockchains, and currencies. The company has already processed billions of dollars in stablecoins through VisaNet, with an annual transaction pace of $7 billion through March 2026. Visa is working to enable seven-day-a-week settlement for both issuing banks and acquirers, which adds more flexibility and frequency to the ecosystem.

Visa is also developing tokenization technology that lets banks turn traditional deposits into programmable digital money that is available around the clock, while the funds stay on the bank's balance sheet. New features like token data enrichment and a token assurance signal help improve transaction assessment and reduce false declines.

AI Innovations and Collaboration With OpenAI

Visa is responding to the rise of "agentic commerce," where AI agents initiate transactions on behalf of consumers and businesses. With tools like Agent Score and Agentic Directory, merchants can judge whether AI agents are effective and trustworthy on their platforms. The Large Transaction Model, an AI model trained on billions of transactions, improves fraud detection and boosts authorization performance.

A major step is Visa's partnership with OpenAI, which will make payments through AI agents possible inside agentic commerce environments. That means developers and merchants can accept Visa payments started by AI, with user-controlled settings like spending limits and approval requirements. Payments run on tokenized Visa credentials and real-time fraud monitoring.

Why This Matters for European Crypto Users

For European users, Visa's move into stablecoins and AI could point to faster adoption of digital currency and automated payment systems. These developments may improve the efficiency and security of cross-border payments, which matters in a region that is heavily focused on digital innovation and crypto regulation. Visa's approach could also play an important role in further integrating blockchain technology into Europe's traditional financial system.

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