Visa Extends Stablecoin Payment Service to Solana

• Visa is the first major institution to use Solana for payment settlements.
• Visa recently announced plans to support off-chain gas settlements for Ethereum users.
• A new CoinShares report ranks SOL as the altcoin of major interest to investors in recent weeks.

Payment platform Visa has announced further expansion in the crypto market to boost the speed of cross-border transactions. According to a statement released by Visa on Tuesday, the payment company has extended its stablecoin payment service to include USDC stablecoins issued on the Solana blockchain.

Visa claims to be one of the first major institutions to leverage Solana for payment settlements. Visa also revealed that it had begun pilot programs with merchant acquirers WorldPay and Nuvei, which handle debit and credit card payments for businesses globally. Both platforms now give their customers the option of receiving USDC stablecoin settlements rather than fiat money.

7/ WorldPay and Nuvei enable card acceptance for a diverse set of merchants across the world including a growing number of merchants interacting with the blockchain and crypto economy who may prefer to use USDC within their corporate treasuries over traditional fiat banking

— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) September 5, 2023

Reacting to the expansion to Solana, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said in a statement:

By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve the speed of cross-border settlement and providing a modern option for our clients to easily send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury.

Sheffield noted that despite being relatively new in the crypto market, “Visa has already settled millions of dollars in USDC over the Ethereum and Solana blockchains between our clients.” He added that “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.”

9/ It's still early days, but Visa has already settled millions of dollars of USDC over the Ethereum and Solana blockchains between our clients. We are committed to continuing to innovate around how we move money and providing our clients modern options for settlement pic.twitter.com/pbByiMAPAY

— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) September 5, 2023

Visa’s first foray into the USDC market began in 2021 after it announced that it was testing the stablecoin for reasury operations. The San Francisco-based company later ran a pilot program with Crypto.com. The program relied on the Ethereum blockchain to settle cross-border payments made with Crypto.com Visa cards.

Visa has other crypto-focused projects in the pipeline. The payment company recently began exploring an approach to using a Paymaster smart contract to settle off-chain gas fee payments for Ethereum

Visa’s presence in the stablecoin market joins the growing trend of traditional finance companies adopting blockchain technology. The stablecoin market, according to multiple reports, has the potential to increase to a $2.8 trillion industry in the next five years

Solana remains popular amongst investors

There’s been a recent decline in interest in altcoins. However, European digital asset manager CoinShares recently reported that Solana remains a favorite of investors. According to CoinShares, SOL has received $700,000 in investments from cryptocurrency investment firms during the past week, making it the most popular altcoin among investors at the moment.” Additionally, year-to-date inflows focused on SOL have reached $26 million

⏰ Let's start the week with our Crypto Monday! Today, with @jbutterfill, we discuss:
– @Grayscale and the SEC: Could current events facilitate the acceptance of #Bitcoin ETFs?
– @0xPolygonLabs developments facilitating layer 2 integrations on #Ethereum
– Potential opportunities… pic.twitter.com/yAmUA6sQXx

— CoinShares (@CoinSharesCo) September 4, 2023

Interestingly, the interest in Solana contrasts with what has gone on with some of its rivals during this period. As per the CoinShares report, investors withdrew $3.2 million from Ethereum and $8.6 million from Polygon investment products