Visa’s fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 results put a number on a business the payments network had previously described only in directional terms. On the earnings call, chief executive Ryan McInerney said stablecoin settlement has surpassed a $25 billion annualized run rate, up tenfold year over year, with support for 10 blockchains and five stablecoins across all five of the company’s regions. The disclosure sat inside a record year, with full-year net revenue of $45.9 billion, up 15%.
Start with what the phrase run rate actually means. It is a pace, not a settled total. An annualized $25 billion translates to roughly $68 million a day, projected over a full year; it does not mean Visa settled $25 billion during the year. The company has not broken out stablecoin revenue or margin separately in its filings, so the figure says something about throughput and nothing yet about profit.
The tenfold growth also needs a base. A 10x increase implies the comparable figure a year earlier was around $2.5 billion annualized. Next to Visa Direct, which processed more than 15 billion transactions representing about $1.5 trillion in volume in fiscal 2026, stablecoin settlement is still a sliver of roughly 1.7%. Growth off a small base is real, but it says little about whether stablecoins are displacing existing card or account-to-account flows.
The settlement metric also measures a different layer than Visa’s card programs. McInerney counted over 225 stablecoin-linked card programs, up more than 70% year over year with volume growth above 150% across roughly five million cards. Those credentials let people spend crypto or stablecoin balances, while the run rate tracks settlement between parties on stablecoin rails. The two are related but not interchangeable, and no single published figure bridges them.
Operationally, the quarter marked a shift from pilot to production. Visa said stablecoin prefunding and cross-border money movement moved to commercial production with Inyo Global as the first live partner, and Open USD, its Flex-linked stablecoin, passed $800 million in circulating supply through October 15. The company is also taking validator roles, joining the founding cohort for Circle’s ARC network alongside existing positions on Tempo and Canton, and its Visa Stablecoin Platform is now available in six markets including the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom. A stablecoin advisory practice added more than 60 engagements, nearly half of them in the fourth quarter.
What remains unproven is monetization and durability. McInerney framed the year around trust rather than a specific stablecoin target, closing his remarks with the line that trust is the next growth vector for Visa. Guidance for fiscal 2027 points to low-double-digit adjusted net revenue growth, and about 25% of payment volume is up for contract renewal next year, up from 20% in fiscal 2026. The company also expects to close its $2.4 billion acquisition of the fraud-intelligence provider BioCatch. The stablecoin rails are being built inside a far larger franchise, so the useful test is whether the run rate compounds again in 2027 or flattens once the early onchain integrations are complete. The milestone is real; the metric behind it is narrower than the word tops suggests.
Source: BlockchainReporter.