Payment Giants are Racing to Own the Stablecoin Settlement Layer
ZB
Zora Bancroft
stablecoin regulation · Apr 10, 2026
Source: The Digital Ledger Data Terminal
Payment networks are redesigning their settlement and payout infrastructure around stablecoins even as these assets account for less than 3% of global payment flows. This shift allows stablecoin settlement to expand commercially without becoming visible at the point of sale, as many hybrid flows never appear as on-chain merchant transactions.
Visa launched USDC settlement in the US in December 2025. By March 25, its global stablecoin settlement activity reached an annualized run rate of $4.6 billion across more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in more than 50 countries. Stripe's stablecoin payments volume doubled to around $400 billion in 2025, while Mastercard's digital currency payment use cases reached at least $350 billion in 2025.
This institutional pivot follows the enactment of the GENIUS Act in July 2025, which supplied the formal US legal framework required for institutional adoption. The largest payment companies are now competing to control the orchestration, compliance, and reserve management layers of the next payment cycle.
Chainalysis projects stablecoin volume could reach $719 trillion by 2035. Transaction volumes could intersect Visa and Mastercard off-chain volumes between 2031 and 2039.
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