- Visa is expanding its USDC settlement pilot to the high-speed Solana blockchain, citing enterprise-grade capabilities.
- The move adds merchants Worldpay and Nuvei to pilot USDC settlements for Visa payments over Solana.
- For Visa, the expansion marks a milestone in practically applying decentralized blockchains for payments.
Visa is bringing its stablecoin settlement pilot to the Solana blockchain, enabling high-throughput transactions with negligible costs for issuers and merchants using USDC.
The move comes after an extensive evaluation of Solana’s speed, costs, and decentralization. Visa cited demand from clients to leverage newer, high-performance chains for moving USDC settlements.
Two additional merchants, Worldpay and Nuvei, will join the pilot, settling Visa payments in USDC over Solana. This real-world adoption validates stablecoins’ potential role within mainstream payments, integrated with existing systems.
Visa Taps Solana for its Features
Visa is aiming to provide enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure and sees Solana as ideal for this goal. Solana settles transactions in 400 milliseconds, averaging 400 TPS and surging to 2,000 TPS during peak times.
These capabilities surpass older chains like Ethereum in meeting Visa’s speed and cost requirements at scale. The pilot will test if SOL network can deliver on its promises under live payment volume.
For Visa, expanding the USDC settlement pilot marks a major milestone in embracing decentralized blockchains. The company is evolving from cautious experimentation to practical implementation.
While Solana suffered setbacks recently around scalability and outages, Visa’s vote of confidence backs its potential as an enterprise-grade solution once refinements are made.
Critically, Visa is not just dabbling with crypto; it is leveraging blockchain technologies to improve real-world payments and settlement processes. This integration speaks volumes about progress in making decentralized finance usable for traditional finance.
Stablecoin settlement lifts barriers to cross-border transactions. Yet questions persist about compliance and regulation. Visa is pushing ahead prudently, assessing each blockchain on its technical merits case-by-case.
By adding the SOL network and expanding the pilot’s scope, Visa underscores that crypto solutions are crossing into the mainstream and not residing on the fringe. Expect more milestones ahead as Web3 fintech matures.
