Visa has plugged five new blockchains into its stablecoin settlement pilot, pushing the card network's role in the on-chain economy from a single-chain experiment to a deliberately multi-chain bridge layer.
The five additions are Arc, the new institutional layer-2 from Circle; Base, the Coinbase-built Ethereum layer-2; Canton, the privacy-focused chain favoured by tokenised securities issuers; Polygon, the long-running Ethereum scaling network; and Tempo, the Stripe-backed payments chain. They join the existing pilot which has run on Ethereum and Solana since 2023.
Rubail Birwadker, Visa's global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, framed the expansion as a customer-led decision rather than a technology bet on any one ecosystem. "Our partners are building in a multi-chain world, and they expect their options to reflect that reality," he said in the announcement.
He added a sentence designed to position Visa as infrastructure, not chain backer. "Expanding our stablecoin settlement pilot program to more blockchains means our partners can choose the networks that best fit their needs, while relying on Visa to provide a common settlement layer across all of them."
The move sits inside a much bigger arms race. Mastercard last week disclosed a US$1.8 billion bid to acquire stablecoin processor BVNK to build what president Michael Miebach calls a "bridge layer" between cards and stablecoins. Kraken parent Payward dropped US$600 million on Reap. PayPal posted a 9% stock fall on its Q1 print despite a beat as chief executive Alex Chriss pitched a "modernisation" reset. The pattern is consistent: every major payments brand is racing to claim a settlement role on top of a fragmenting stablecoin issuer base.
The choice of chains tells its own story. Arc is Circle's institutional play, designed for USDC at scale. Base is now the dominant Ethereum layer-2 by stablecoin TVL. Canton is the chain favoured by Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon and DTCC, which has its own tokenised securities pilot launching in July. Polygon's stablecoin volumes have rebounded after the AggLayer rebuild. Tempo is the most recent addition, bringing Stripe's merchant base into the picture.
For Visa partners, the practical change is that any of them can now settle USDC and select dollar stablecoins on whichever of these networks suits the corridor or the merchant. Visa absorbs the bridging risk and the on-chain compliance lift, then delivers fiat-equivalent net positions through its existing card rails. That mirrors the original 2023 pilot logic on Solana and Ethereum, which Visa has expanded gradually with selected acquirers and PSPs.
The stablecoin settlement market itself has changed shape since that first pilot. The GENIUS Act, finalised in late 2025, set a federal framework for issuance and reserves, prompting a wave of bank- and corporate-issued tokens. Anchorage Digital this week told CoinDesk it has a pipeline of "up to 20 big firms" preparing to issue tokens through its custody platform. Western Union has shifted Latin American corridors onto its USDPT token on Solana. Tetra Trust launched the first regulated Canadian-dollar stablecoin backed by Shopify and National Bank of Canada.
In that context, Visa's expansion is less an experiment and more a defensive multi-chain hedge. By plugging into Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo, the card network is making sure that wherever the next dollar of stablecoin volume settles, it still touches Visa rails on the way to the merchant. That, more than the specific chain count, is the signal worth tracking.