Key Highlights:

  • As part of its efforts to revolutionize cross-border payments, Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain.

  • Visa also partnered with Worldpay and Nuvei to provide merchants with flexible, in-house treasury operations and leverage stablecoins for cross-border transactions.

  • This has seen the price of SOL rally above 1% in just 24 hours

Visa, a leading global payment service provider, has announced the expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities to include the renowned Solana blockchain.

While Visa has embarked on a relentless mission to modernize the global money movement, this development marks a significant milestone toward achieving its mission.

Over the years, the payment giant has remained open-minded to integrating new innovations, hence it has embraced the concept of digital currencies and blockchain technology into its payment system. Lately, Visa has sought to integrate the Solana ecosystem.

Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa, stated, "Visa is committed to being on the forefront of digital currency and blockchain innovation and leveraging these new technologies to help improve the way we move money."

As part of this innovation, Visa has scaled up its stablecoin settlement pilot program to incorporate the Solana blockchain. According to a recent tweet from the company, the expansion aims to provide enterprise-grade throughput while significantly reducing costs for Visa issuers and merchant acquirers operating on the Solana network.

1/?Breaking: Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlement Pilot to Solana@Visa is scaling their USDC settlement pilot to include the Solana blockchain, enabling enterprise-grade throughput at virtually no cost for Visa issuers and merchant acquirers on Solana. https://t.co/rF5ouZaISM

— Solana (@solana) September 5, 2023

Visa as First Payment Leader to Explore Stablecoin Settlements 

It appears that the use of stablecoins, particularly Circle's USDC, has been a key focus for Visa. A few years back, Visa initiated the exploration of stablecoin usage in its treasury operations.

The initiative led to a successful pilot program with Crypto.com, a unique partnership that saw Visa emerging as one of the first major payment networks to experiment with stablecoin settlements.

Since its iteration, the primary goal behind Visa's stablecoin settlement program has been to streamline cross-border transactions. Hence, Visa initiated this program to leverage USDC and the Ethereum blockchain to receive payments from Crypto.com while boosting engagements on their live card program in Australia for cross-border purposes.

Traditionally, cross-border transactions involve a complex and time-consuming process of currency conversion and international wire transfers. By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, Visa seeks to expedite cross-border settlement, offering a modern solution to clients for seamless fund transfers.

Notably, Visa's integration of the Solana blockchain was followed by a dual partnership with Worldpay and Nuvei. This partnership will enhance its ability to leverage stablecoins for cross-border transactions while also providing merchants with flexible, in-house treasury operations.

Jim Johnson, President of Worldpay Merchant Solutions at FIS, also highlighted the benefits of Visa's USDC settlement capability, noting that it allows Worldpay to bring more of its treasury operations in-house, providing merchants with increased flexibility in receiving funds.

SOL Rallies Above 0.80% Amid Bearish Trend

The recent price movement within the Solana ecosystem suggests that its integration with Visa is set to not only enhance the payment giant's efficiency but, it has triggered a positive trend in the price of SOL in the last few hours.

The past months may not have been favourable for the Solana ecosystem as it had continued on a reddish trend seeing its price drop by -40% over the past year. However, it appears that the development has slightly impacted the value of SOL as the token records a +1.21% price surge in the last 24 hours. According to data provided by Coincodex, Solana is trading at $ 19.77 as of the time of writing.