Visa Opens Stablecoin Platform to Selected Beta Clients

Visa has opened a new platform for selected financial institutions and fintech companies to test stablecoin operations. The service sits inside Visa’s payment infrastructure. Clients can use one environment to create wallets and manage the minting, transfer and redemption of Open USD.

The Visa Stablecoin Platform brings several previously separate technical functions together. However, it remains a limited beta, and Visa has not made the service broadly available to banks, consumers or the merchants connected to its network.

Visa packages stablecoin operations in one system

The platform, known as VSP, serves banks, fintech companies, payment providers and crypto businesses. According to Visa’s July 16 announcement, approved clients can manage stablecoins through a Visa-controlled environment. Their available functions include minting, holding, transferring and redeeming tokens.

Minting creates new stablecoin units when the required money enters the system. Burning removes units when a holder redeems them. Visa is packaging those processes with bank-account connections, wallet infrastructure and controls over who can authorize transactions.

Meanwhile, institutions can use Visa’s new Wallet-as-a-Service offering or connect wallets they already operate. The system includes audit logs, transfer allow lists and dual approvals. Under that last control, one person starts a sensitive transaction and another authorized user must approve it.

Together, these features address a practical obstacle for financial companies. A business may want to use stablecoins without building every technical and internal control itself.

>>> Read more: Visa Launches USDC Settlement for U.S. Banks

Open USD is the first supported stablecoin

The Visa Stablecoin Platform begins with Open USD, or OUSD. Open Standard recently introduced the dollar-linked token with support from a group of financial, technology and crypto companies.

Visa does not issue OUSD. But, VSP connects participating institutions to the Open Standard system so they can mint, burn, manage and transfer the stablecoin.

VSP launches with support for Open USD alongside Visa’s existing support for Circle’s USDC and Paxos’ USDG through its earlier stablecoin services. Still, the company has not named which blockchain or blockchains VSP itself is using for the current tests, even though Visa’s broader stablecoin settlement infrastructure already runs on disclosed networks.

The choice also adds another competitor to the market led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. Reportedly, Circle shares fell around 5% on July 16 as investors assessed the new competitive pressure. Only time will show whether the sentiment proves right and OUSD gains significant adoption.

The platform connects with Visa’s existing services

Visa already supports stablecoin settlement for selected partners and works with stablecoin-linked cards and blockchain-based money movement. VSP links those capabilities with the treasury and settlement systems that institutions use today.

For example, a client could link a bank account and set internal policies for stablecoin movements. It could then manage wallets and approvals through the platform. At the same time, the client could connect that activity to existing Visa services.

This approach gives institutions another way to handle money behind payment, settlement or treasury products, next to Visa’s card network. Consumers may not see the stablecoin layer at all if a bank or fintech builds it into an existing service.

>>> Read more: Visa Taps BVNK to Pilot Stablecoin Payouts via Visa Direct

Broad availability still depends on the beta

Visa’s network reaches about 15,000 financial institutions and more than 200 million merchants, according to Fortune. Should Visa decide to expand beyond the current beta, this base would be large enough that even modest adoption within VSP could translate into meaningful volume.

The company has not disclosed the names of participating institutions, transaction volumes, pricing, or a timetable for broader access. It has said, however, that beta results will determine how and where it expands the platform.