Visa: Stablecoins Represent Opportunities in Emerging Markets, Cross-Border Money Movement

Stablecoins represent an important opportunity for a subset of use cases, including in emerging markets, Visa Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell wrote in a Sunday (June 22) blog post.

Problems stablecoins may solve include use cases in which users want to hold U.S. dollars but don’t have access to them, when local fiat currency is highly volatile, or for certain cross-border money movement like remittances and B2B payments, according to the post.

“We see these use cases as new flows that we do not currently fully address today, providing a way for us to grow our business,” Forestell said in the post. “Here, we plan to deploy the power of the Visa stack, in partnership with stablecoin native partners and platforms and our financial institution partners.”

Forestell said this in a post in which he said the Senate’s passage of the GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation is a key step toward regulatory clarity for stablecoins in the U.S.

He added that Visa is already active in the stablecoin space with solutions that deploy Visa credentials and Visa tokens to connect stablecoin and crypto platforms and their users to fiat currency and the company’s global network, deliver native stablecoin settlement, enable cross-border money movement solutions via stablecoin infrastructure and deliver programmable money solutions.

While highlighting stablecoins’ potential use cases in emerging markets, Forestell added that in other cases, most consumers and businesses will continue to use fiat currency and Visa credentials.

“It is less obvious that consumers and businesses will seek to make payments using stablecoins in developed markets such as the United States as there are already a wide array of competitive options to pay with ‘digital dollars’ directly from a bank account,” Forestell said in the post.

Visa said Wednesday (June 18) that it partnered with licensed stablecoin payments orchestrator Yellow Card to explore stablecoin use cases and opportunities across the African markets in which Yellow Card is licensed to operate.

In May, Rain, a global card-issuing platform built for stablecoins, joined Visa’s pilot program for stablecoin settlement. The companies said this collaboration enhances Rain’s ability to help FinTechs and wallets meet the growing demand for real-time global payments by issuing and using on-chain cards and settling in stablecoins.