Visa’s Stablecoin Platform Wires Open USD Into 200M Merchants, 9 Chains
Visa's new VSP bundles wallet infra and Open USD access for institutions, landing alongside a $403 price target and stock gains.
Visa has switched on a dedicated stablecoin infrastructure layer, the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), giving financial institutions, fintechs and crypto-native firms a single Visa-managed environment to mint, move and manage stablecoins across a network the company says already touches more than 200 million merchants.
The launch was announced in a Thursday press release and confirmed by Visa’s crypto head, Cuy Sheffield, with Fortune reporting the rollout initially runs through Open USD, Visa’s tie-in to the Open Standard framework. Watcher.Guru and The Defiant both corroborated the 200-million-merchant reach figure tied to the announcement.
What the platform actually bundles
VSP is structured as an operational stack rather than a single product. It packages wallet-as-a-service tooling — secure passkeys, transfer allow-lists, dual-control approval workflows requiring a second authorized user to sign off on sensitive actions, and audit logging — on top of direct access to mint, burn, manage and transfer Open USD.
The pitch to institutions is interoperability with Visa’s existing settlement, treasury and currency infrastructure: clients already plugged into those Visa systems get direct connectivity to embed stablecoin flows into current treasury and payment workflows rather than building parallel rails.
“Stablecoins are opening up a new layer of programmable money, but for most institutions the hard part isn’t the concept; it’s the operational reality,” said Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer, in the press release. “With the Visa Stablecoin Platform, we’re giving our clients a single place to mint, move and manage stablecoin operations with the controls, security and network reach they already expect from Visa.”
Nine chains, three announcements in five months
VSP is the third leg of a rapid stablecoin build-out. In March, Visa became the first major payments company to join the Canton Network as a Super Validator, a role designed to let banks route stablecoin payments, settlement and treasury operations through a privacy-focused chain. In April, Visa added Base, Polygon, Canton, Arc and Tempo to its stablecoin settlement program, bringing its total supported blockchain network count to nine.
Read together, the three moves point to Visa positioning itself as connective infrastructure across chains rather than betting on a single ledger — a strategy that mirrors how its card network abstracts away issuing banks and acquirers today.
Stock desk reaction
Visa (V) shares rose Thursday following the announcement. Clear Street initiated coverage on the stock the same day with a Buy rating and a $403 price target, citing Visa’s financial performance and market position alongside the stablecoin push as supporting factors.
For on-chain desks, the relevant signal isn’t the equity move itself but the plumbing: a legacy payments incumbent now offers institutional clients wallet infrastructure, custody-grade controls and multi-chain settlement access under one roof, potentially compressing the build-versus-buy decision that has slowed bank-side stablecoin adoption to date.
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