TheBlock
Visa used its annual payments forum on Wednesday to position stablecoins as core infrastructure rather than a side bet, with chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell arguing that "AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end." The company said its stablecoin settlement business has hit a $7 billion annualized run rate as of March 2026, and is expanding pilots across more regions, blockchains, and currencies.
The company also said issuing banks already settle seven days a week onchain through Visa, and that it is now extending seven-day settlement to acquirers as well — a structural shift that compresses working-capital cycles across the entire ecosystem. Alongside that, Visa is building the technology layer for tokenized deposits, letting banks turn traditional deposits into programmable digital money that stays on their balance sheets.
Why it matters
The framing is the story. By slotting stablecoins into the settlement layer and AI agents into the consumer layer, Visa is signalling that the next decade of payments will be rebuilt around two rails running in parallel — programmable money at the back, intelligent agents at the front. The OpenAI partnership, which lets developers and merchants accept Visa payments initiated by AI agents under user-defined spending limits and merchant restrictions, makes the agentic-commerce bet concrete: Codex-based workflows, conversational checkout, and automated agent-to-merchant transactions all routing through Visa's tokenized credentials and real-time fraud stack.
The tokenization push runs deeper than payments. Visa is enriching token data with location and transaction-type signals, and shipping a "token assurance" trust score that scores each token's lifecycle use. Combined with the new Large Transaction Model — trained on billions of transactions to cut false declines and improve fraud detection — the message to issuers and merchants is that the next competitive edge in cards will come from intelligence layered on top of the rail, not from the rail itself.
Frequently asked questions
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What did Visa announce about stablecoins at its 2026 payments forum?
Visa said its stablecoin settlement business has hit a $7 billion annualized run rate as of March 2026, with pilots expanding across more regions, blockchains, and currencies. Chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell framed stablecoins as reshaping the back end of commerce while AI transforms the front end.
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What is Visa's partnership with OpenAI?
Visa said it has partnered with OpenAI to let developers and merchants accept Visa payments initiated by AI agents under user-defined controls, including spending limits, merchant restrictions, and approval requirements. Payments will use tokenized Visa credentials with real-time authorization and fraud monitoring.
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What is seven-day settlement on Visa's stablecoin rails?
Issuing banks already settle seven days a week onchain through Visa, and the company is now extending that capability to acquirers as well. The move compresses working-capital cycles across the payments ecosystem compared to traditional T+1 or T+2 settlement.
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What is Visa's tokenized deposits initiative?
Visa is building the technology layer for tokenized deposits, allowing banks to convert traditional deposits into programmable, always-on digital money while keeping the funds on their balance sheets. The product sits alongside enriched token data and a token assurance trust score that evaluates each token's lifecycle…
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What are Agent Score, Agentic Directory, and the Large Transaction Model?
Agent Score lets merchants evaluate whether AI agents can complete tasks on their websites; Agentic Directory is a verified registry of agents and merchants approved for agentic commerce; and the Large Transaction Model is an AI model trained on billions of transactions designed to improve fraud detection and reduce…
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