Visa introduces Visa Stablecoin Platform

Visa took the wraps off Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), offering financial institutions, fintechs and other payment services providers a single on-chain environment to run stablecoin operations. VSP is initially available for beta testing with select clients, Visa said in a press release. It added that as clients test and refine use cases, Visa will use those learnings to inform how and where the platform scales to broader market availability.

Building on Visa's broad crypto strategy, VSP offers a simple way for FIs and other PSPs to access, store and redeem stablecoins, beginning with Open USD, a stablecoin designed for global money management announced last month by Open Standard, a new organization advancing publicly available technical specification.

More than 140 businesses, including Visa and Mastercard, have signed on to Open USD, which is expected to go live later this year, according to Zach Abrams, founding CEO of Open Standard.

VSP includes an on-chain wallet infrastructure through a newly introduced wallet-as-a-service offering and connectivity for minting and burning Open USD.

Turning interest into reality

"Stablecoins are opening up a new layer of programmable money, but for most institutions the hard part isn't the concept, it's the operational reality," said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa.

"With the Visa Stablecoin Platform," Forestell continued, "we're giving our clients a single place to mint, move and manage stablecoin operations with the controls, security and network reach they already expect from Visa. It's how we help them turn interest in stablecoins into real products and real payment flows"

VSP provides direct access to a range of stablecoin capabilities and flows alongside the Visa network, as well as risk and fraud capabilities, so institutions can move from exploration to implementation with greater confidence, Visa noted. Features and capabilities include:

• Access to Open USD, integrating seamlessly into Open Standards providing institutions with direct access to Open USD alongside Visa network services. This will provide clients with a way to easily mint, burn, manage and transfer Open USD, bringing fiat on chain and managing flows in a trusted environment, Visa said.

• On chain wallet infrastructure, with VSP packaging the infrastructure controls and workflows to support stablecoin uses inside real-world treasury, settlement and product stacks for a range of institutional use cases.

• Connectivity of stablecoins into Visa's network and tools, allowing users to embed stablecoin capabilities into existing payment flows, treasury operations and settlement processes. For existing Visa clients using Visa settlement, treasury and currency, VSP provides direct interoperability to seamlessly integrate the stablecoins into the workflows and systems they rely on already, Visa said.

• Financial institutions' ability to interact with stablecoin flows with the same security and trust Visa is known for, Visa said. Users will have access to features like dual-control approval for workflows, where one user initiates a sensitive action and another authorized user must approve it; comprehensive audit logging; and wallet-as-a-service features of secure passkeys and allow lists for controlling transfers, helping financial institutions maintain the security and control they require.

Interoperability with existing stablecoins

VSP is interoperable with Visa's existing stablecoin offerings, including stablecoin settlement, stablecoin-linked cards and stablecoin money movement. "Together, these capabilities provide a full stack of solutions that help FIs and fintechs come on chain and enable crypto platforms to access Visa's global network," Visa explained in a press release.

Institutions can onboard into a Visa-managed wallet stack or connect to existing wallets, creating a single home to manage stablecoin mint, burn and transfer activity.

VSP will support minting, redeeming, holding and transferring stablecoins, from the get go, beginning with Open USD, as part of treasury, settlement and liquidity workflows, Visa stated. Clients will be able to link bank accounts and configure approvals, users and policies to govern who can initiate and approve stablecoin movements, the company added.

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