Visa Opens Onchain Lending for Stablecoin Card Programs Settling in USDC

Credit Coop Brings a $2.5B Record to the Table

Stablecoin card issuers and fintechs plugged into Visa's network can now source working capital from onchain lending markets, after the payments company said on September 8 that it has connected VisaNet settlement data to blockchain lending infrastructure. The mechanism is straightforward: lenders can pull a card program's settlement history and onchain transaction records in real time, use them to price credit risk, and extend financing against the receivables that program is due to collect — a card issuer's own transaction performance on the network effectively becomes its collateral. The company's official announcement names Credit Coop, a blockchain credit protocol that extends credit lines to businesses, as the first working example of the arrangement. Credit Coop runs the flow through smart contracts that automate disbursement, collateral management and repayment: loans are underwritten against upcoming settlement receipts, and repayment is deducted directly from incoming funds. The track record is substantial. Since 2023, these facilities have financed more than $2.5 billion in settlement volume, generating over 3,000 loan events and more than 9,000 repayments recorded onchain — with zero defaults across the participating facilities to date, per the announcement. The move also extends Visa's earlier stablecoin settlement work, which brought USDC, issued by Circle, into the network's settlement stack. Until now, onchain lending has largely meant collateralized DeFi borrowing; the new model ties it to short-term financing of actual settlement obligations, a step closer to the real economy. For issuers, the practical shift sits on the funding side: card programs that once depended on bank credit lines to bridge the gap between a customer's purchase and settlement day can now obtain that bridge from onchain credit markets, with Visa's own settlement records serving as the underwriting input.

160 Card Programs and a $20B Settlement Run Rate

The lending integration lands on a stablecoin business that Visa says is scaling quickly. The network now carries more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, and spending across those programs grew close to 200% year over year, while stablecoin settlement volume has passed a $20 billion annualized rate — more than 15 times the level of a year earlier. Management set the strategic frame on the July fiscal third-quarter call, telling investors the company is “investing in every layer of the stablecoin stack”: blockchains, wallets, infrastructure and applications. That scope runs from enterprise-grade ledgers of the kind Hedera services to the cross-chain plumbing — bridges in the mold of Stargate Finance — that moves stablecoins between networks. Visa has also joined the OpenStandard alliance, a group of more than 140 companies including Stripe that plans to issue the OpenUSD (OUSD) stablecoin, putting the card network on the issuance side of the market, not just the payment side. The Visa Onchain Analytics dashboard recorded an all-time high of $1.79 trillion in adjusted stablecoin volume in June, with roughly $1.2 trillion over the trailing 30 days — context for why credit provision at the settlement layer matters. The industry backdrop is equally large: onchain lending protocols have extended $694 billion in stablecoin-denominated loans since 2020, activity that until now sat inside DeFi rather than beside trading venues such as Uniswap. Visa's head of global growth products and partnerships, Rubail Birwadker, said stablecoins are changing how money moves and creating an opening to rethink the financial infrastructure behind payments. Credit Coop founder and CEO Chris Walker framed the gap being closed: settlement receivables have long served as solid collateral, but payment companies previously had no way to demonstrate their performance to lenders in real time. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

Credit Moves Onto the Settlement Layer

The thread tying both developments together is the migration of settlement credit itself onchain. The press release states the concrete terms — VisaNet settlement data feeding onchain lenders, Credit Coop as the live deployment, and facilities that have financed $2.5 billion since 2023 — while leaving undisclosed the commercial terms between the two companies and which blockchains will host the lending rails. The group this actually reaches is concrete: the 160-plus stablecoin-linked card programs on the network, run by issuers and fintechs that can now finance settlement obligations against their own receivables rather than bank credit lines alone. COINOTAG's reading: the real change is the underwriting input — Visa's own settlement data becoming collateral evidence onchain.