Visa Is Turning Payment Data Into an Underwriting Moat for Stablecoin Loans

Fintechs operating stablecoin-linked card programs frequently hit a capital wall before they develop the scale or operating history that traditional banks require. In practice, smart contracts operated by Credit Coop tap into authorized VisaNet feeds, assess payment performance, and direct incoming settlement receivables toward loan repayment.

The structure uses settlement receivables—the short-term funds owed to a payment business—as collateral. Funding, collateral management, and repayment run through smart contracts as the receivables arrive. Traditional merchant cash advances and working capital loans for payment startups often carry annual percentage rates exceeding 15%–30% because lenders rely on manual underwriting and must price delayed settlement risks into the facility. By pulling transaction history directly from VisaNet, lenders can evaluate cash flows while automated contracts collect repayment from incoming funds.

Visa said the Credit Coop model has supported more than $2.5 billion in cumulative settlement volume since 2023.

Zero borrowers have defaulted.

That record positions VisaNet credit underwriting as the data layer between stablecoin card issuers and lenders searching for short-term payment flows. The arrangement also gives Stablecoin card program working capital a structure that does not depend solely on a borrower’s conventional credit history.

On Visa’s network, settlement volume across more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs has grown nearly 200% year over year. Stablecoin settlement volume has risen more than 15-fold to an annualized settlement volume above $20 billion.

Underlying smart contracts do not remove the need to manage payment activity across multiple networks. Visa’s settlement program now includes Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo, alongside four previously supported blockchains. The nine-network footprint adds technical coordination to the Visa stablecoin settlement system.

Circle’s USDC remains the primary stablecoin asset used in Visa’s settlement pilots, alongside Ethereum and Solana network integrations that laid the technical groundwork for real-time merchant liquidity. Together, those integrations form part of the USDC Visa settlement network and the wider Blockchain payment infrastructure.

In April, the company disclosed a $7 billion annualized settlement rate. The figure is now above $20 billion.

Financing demand is also colliding with a broader shortage of real-world asset yield opportunities for institutional lenders in decentralized finance. Programmatic cash-flow collateralized loans can offer those investors a more predictable source of yield than unsecured crypto credit. Onchain lending protocols have processed more than $694 billion in stablecoin loans since 2020, according to Visa’s analytics dashboard.

Visa has argued that stablecoin lending could bring portions of the $40 trillion global credit market onto blockchains. The size of that opportunity does not establish how broadly the model can work. The release did not identify participating lenders, specify financing rates, or disclose how widely the facilities are available.

Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s global head of growth products and partnerships, said trusted payment data and onchain technologies could help businesses access capital in ways that are more transparent, programmable, and aligned with modern commerce. Visa has also described stablecoins as a way to redesign payment infrastructure, while its July platform for banks and fintechs combined issuance, wallets, transfers, and treasury functions with the company’s payment network.