Report: Visa to Join Global Dollar Network Stablecoin Consortium

Visa is reportedly joining the Global Dollar Network (USDG) stablecoin consortium.

The company will become the first traditional finance player to join the consortium that shares out yield to participants that create connectivity and liquidity, CoinDesk reported Monday (April 14), citing unnamed sources.

Reached by PYMNTS, a Visa spokesperson said in an email that the company does not comment on rumor or speculation.

USDG members include Paxos, Robinhood, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, Anchorage Digital, Bullish and Nuvei, according to the CoinDesk report.

It was reported in November that the Global Dollar Network introduced a joint stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar and aimed to accelerate the use of stablecoins worldwide and promote an asset that provides proportionate economic benefits to its partners.

In a Nov. 4 press release announcing the launch of the consortium, the Global Dollar Network said membership is open to custodians, exchanges, payment FinTechs, merchants, protocols, card networks, banks and investment platforms.

It added that the network will focus on the Global Dollar (USDG), which is a stablecoin issued out of Singapore by Paxos.

“Stablecoins are replatforming the financial system and revolutionizing how people interact with U.S. dollars and payments,” Paxos CEO and co-founder Charles Cascarilla said in the release. “However, the leading stablecoins are unregulated and retain all the reserve economics. Global Dollar Network will return virtually all rewards to participants and is open for anyone to join.”

Stablecoins have started to decouple themselves from crypto exchanges and position themselves as a component of real-world financial infrastructure, PYMNTS reported in March.

This change comes amid signs of broader adoption of stablecoins in mainstream financial activities including B2B payments, capital markets, lending, cross-border payments and treasury management.

Visa launched a new platform in October that enables banks to issue fiat-backed tokens, such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

The Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP) is designed to use the payment company’s expertise in technologies like smart contracts to let banks issue and transfer fiat-backed tokens over blockchain networks.

“Visa has been at the forefront of digital payments for nearly 60 years, and with the introduction of VTAP, we are once again setting the pace for the industry,” Vanessa Colella, global head of innovation and digital partnerships at Visa, said at the time.