<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div><p>This article discusses global trends in crypto payments and stablecoin settlements, primarily focusing on overseas payment institutions such as Visa, overseas stablecoin payment infrastructures, and relevant international regulatory frameworks. The terms &#34;crypto payments,&#34; &#34;stablecoin payments,&#34; and &#34;U-cards&#34; mentioned in this article are not intended for the mainland China market and do not constitute advice for mainland China residents to participate in virtual currency transactions, payments, investments, or related businesses. Mainland China has clear regulatory requirements for virtual currency-related businesses, and relevant institutions and individuals should strictly comply with current laws, regulations, and regulatory policies. Visa has recently further fueled the crypto payments industry. On April 29, 2026, Visa announced the continued expansion of its global stablecoin settlement pilot program, adding five new blockchain networks, bringing the total number of blockchains supported by its stablecoin settlement pilot program to nine. At the same time, Visa disclosed that the annualized stablecoin settlement volume of the pilot program has reached $7 billion, a 50% increase compared to the previous quarter. This news, if viewed merely as &#34;Visa is also working on stablecoins,&#34; is a superficial understanding. Visa isn't just starting to experiment with stablecoin payments. It has been piloting stablecoin settlements around USDC, card issuers, acquiring institutions, and on-chain settlements for a long time. In January of this year, Reuters reported that Visa was integrating stablecoins into its existing payment system and had already piloted in the US allowing some banks to use USDC for settlements with Visa, with the annualized stablecoin settlement volume disclosed at the time being approximately $4.5 billion. Therefore, what's truly noteworthy this time isn't Visa's &#34;sudden embrace of stablecoins,&#34; but rather its continued investment, and this investment isn't just a front-end gimmick, but rather in the underlying settlement 环节 of the payment network. This indicates that crypto payments are transforming from a product story within the Web3 community into a serious infrastructure investment for traditional payment giants. In today's market where many Web3 narratives are no longer appealing, this change is all the more worthy of serious attention from entrepreneurs and investors. Visa continues to ramp up its efforts; stablecoin settlement is no longer just a testing ground. Many Web3 news stories are hyped up for a few days and then fade away. Today it's a strategic partnership, tomorrow an ecosystem partner, the day after a technology integration. They all sound big, but in real-world business, nothing may actually happen. Visa's news is different. It's not a single PR move, but a continuation of a series of actions. Visa has added Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo to its supported blockchains, bringing the total to nine chains—Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar—forming a pilot network for stablecoin settlement. The underlying signal is clear: Visa isn't betting on a single blockchain, nor is it a one-off trial; it's building a multi-chain settlement network. More importantly, Visa is emphasizing not &#34;users using stablecoins for spending,&#34; but rather issuer/acquirer settlement—the settlement arrangements between card issuers, acquirers, and the Visa network. This is very interesting. Front-end payments are often easily packaged as marketing stories, but back-end settlements are difficult to support with just concepts. Whether it can reduce costs, improve efficiency, penetrate transactions, manage risk, and be accepted by financial institutions—these are all unavoidable questions. If stablecoins remain only within exchanges, they are merely liquidity tools in the crypto asset market. But if stablecoins enter the settlement layer of a payment network, they begin to become financial infrastructure. This is the most noteworthy aspect of Visa's increased investment this time. The question of whether stablecoins can be used for payments isn't being discussed again; rather, mainstream payment networks are answering it in their own way: stablecoins can serve as a supplementary settlement tool to traditional payment systems. This answer carries more weight than any Web3 project's self-promotion. Many Web3 stories are no longer compelling, but payments are still compelling. There's a clear change in the Web3 industry: many stories are harder to tell. Public chains are too complex, DeFi is too outdated, NFTs are too niche, GameFi is too abstract, and AI + Crypto often becomes a mere conceptual patchwork. The era when a grand narrative, a beautiful white paper, and an ecosystem fund could sustain market expectations is no longer as easy as it used to be. But payments are different. Payments aren't stories; payments are the flow of funds. For example, a foreign trade company wanting to collect money from overseas customers—this isn't a narrative. A Web3 company paying salaries to its global workforce isn't a narrative. An exchange providing local deposits and withdrawals isn't a narrative. An RWA project handling investor subscriptions and redemptions isn't a narrative. A wallet connecting users' stablecoin balances to real-world spending scenarios isn't a narrative either. These are real business needs that occur every day. This is why crypto payments are more noteworthy today. It may not be the most glamorous, but it's closest to money; it may not be the easiest to mythologize, but it's the easiest to generate revenue; it may not excite the market overnight, but it's something customers use every day. The challenge for many Web3 projects is: why should users use yours? But the logic of the payment business is more direct: as long as you can make money transfer faster, cheaper, more stable, and more accessible, there is commercial value. This value doesn't require much imagination. High costs, slow arrival times, long banking chains, uncertainty due to weekends and holidays, easy account freezing, and insufficient financial infrastructure in emerging markets are persistent problems. Stablecoins are not a panacea, but they do provide a new path for value transfer. Therefore, Visa's continued investment in stablecoin settlement is not an isolated event. It simply makes an ongoing trend more apparent: stablecoin payments are moving from a &#34;crypto tool&#34; to &#34;payment infrastructure.&#34; Why Crypto Payments Are One of the Few Still Worth Investing In Crypto payments are worth pursuing, not because they are new, but because they are practical. This statement may not sound exciting, but it is very important. Many Web3 startups today are still searching for the &#34;next narrative,&#34; but payments don't need to be invented as a new one. Business payments, user payments, merchant settlements, platform revenue sharing, cross-border remittances, stablecoin deposits and withdrawals, and RWA subscriptions and redemptions—these scenarios already exist. Crypto payments simply recombine stablecoins, wallets, on-chain transfers, fiat currency channels, payment networks, and compliance systems, allowing funds to flow in a new way. There are at least three reasons to continue investing in this sector. The first reason is that the demand is real. Regardless of market conditions, businesses need to receive money, make payments, and settle accounts. Especially in cross-border scenarios, the traditional banking system is not always cheap, fast, stable, or user-friendly. For SMEs, cross-border e-commerce, Web3 teams, freelancers, overseas service providers, and users in emerging markets, stablecoin payments are no longer an abstract concept, but a tangible alternative. The second reason is that stablecoins have formed a de facto on-chain dollar network. Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are no longer just pricing tools on exchanges. They are becoming dollar liquidity tools in many on-chain applications, cross-border transactions, emerging market capital flows, and Web3 enterprise operations. As long as stablecoins continue to be used, there will be demand for services related to payments, exchanges, custody, settlement, risk control, and compliance. The third reason is that the entry of giants will not eliminate entrepreneurial opportunities; instead, it will mature the market. Institutions like Visa, Mastercard, Circle, and Stripe are better at building underlying networks, clearing standards, large institutional clients, and global partnerships. However, in specific countries, industries, customers, and scenarios, a large number of middleware and application-layer service providers are still needed. Some will provide U-cards, some will provide merchant acquiring, some will provide enterprise wallets, some will provide OTC channels, some will provide stablecoin deposits and withdrawals, some will provide cross-border B2B payments, some will provide RWA subscription and redemption, some will provide on-chain payroll, some will provide payment APIs, and some will provide stablecoin clearing networks. These directions may seem different, but they all revolve around one underlying issue: how to enable stablecoins to complete receipts, payments, exchanges, and settlements in the real business world. In the future, the crypto payment industry will likely not be dominated by a single player, but rather a multi-layered structure: the bottom layer consists of stablecoin issuers, blockchains, and clearing networks; the middle layer consists of licensed payment institutions, card issuers, acquiring institutions, and liquidity providers; and the top layer consists of wallets, merchants, enterprise customers, industry scenarios, and user entry points. Startups don't necessarily need to focus on the most basic aspects, but they can specialize in a particular region, a specific customer group, or a specific scenario. For example, there are stablecoin payment and collection services specifically for cross-border e-commerce sellers; payroll and expense reimbursement services specifically for Web3 companies; subscription and redemption services specifically for RWA projects; wallet deposits and withdrawals specifically for exchanges; stablecoin settlement services specifically for foreign trade companies; and stablecoin and fiat currency liquidity management specifically for high-net-worth clients. These are not simply businesses based on hype. As long as they solve clients' real cash flow problems, there is room for charging fees. In today's phase where the overall narrative of the Web3 industry is cooling down, crypto payments are becoming one of the few areas with increasingly strong certainty due to real demand, investment from giants, and compliance consolidation. The hype may fade, but the cash flow will not disappear.</p><h2><strong>The better the track, the less you can use unconventional methods</strong></h2><p>However, crypto payments are not a track that can be successfully run in the long run using unconventional methods. The reason is simple: it involves money. Once you involve money, you will inevitably encounter regulation.</p><p>Even with &#34;stablecoin payments,&#34; some models may only be technical services, while others may constitute virtual asset services, remittances, currency exchange, merchant acquiring, or even trigger regulation of stored value payment instruments, electronic money, or payment institutions.</p><p>The most typical example is the U-card. Many people think that the U-card is just &#34;users top up U and then swipe the card to make purchases.&#34; But if you really break it down, there are a lot of problems: Who issues the card? Who holds the user's stablecoin? Who completes the stablecoin exchange? What is the nature of the user's balance? What does the merchant receive? Who is responsible for refunds and chargebacks? Who is responsible for KYC? Which countries' users cannot use the service?</p><p>Can the app be listed locally? The same applies to merchant stablecoin payments. If the platform only provides a plugin, the risk is relatively limited; however, if the platform helps merchants collect stablecoins, aggregate funds, exchange them for local fiat currency, and then transfer the funds to the merchants, it's no longer a simple technical service, but may simultaneously involve custody, exchange, payment settlement, and merchant acquiring. Therefore, the increased certainty of crypto payments does not mean a lower barrier to entry. On the contrary, the more certain the market becomes, the more rigorous the regulation; the more giants enter the fray, the harder it is for unconventional approaches to survive. If you really want to enter this market, you can't just focus on the product and channels; you need to first clarify your business structure: are you providing wallets, exchanges, remittances, acquiring, card issuance, clearing, custody, or technical services? Which part of the cash flow do you control? Which entity signs contracts with users? Which partners bear licensing obligations? Which countries can the service be provided in, and which must be blocked? How should user agreements, risk disclosure, AML systems, and on-chain risk control be integrated into the business process? These are not formal issues, but rather part of the business model. The biggest fear in the crypto payment industry now isn't a lack of opportunity. The biggest fear is seeing the opportunity, developing the product, and then realizing that you've been running your business with a flawed structure from day one. Visa's actions demonstrate that the path of stablecoin payments is widening. But a wider path doesn't mean you can drive blindly.</p></div></div></div>

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<p>本文讨论了全球加密支付和稳定币结算的趋势，重点关注 Visa 等海外支付机构及相关国际监管框架。文中提到的 “加密支付”、“稳定币支付” 和 “U 卡” 不适用于中国大陆市场，也不构成对大陆居民参与虚拟货币交易、支付、投资或相关业务的建议。中国大陆对虚拟货币相关业务有明确的监管要求。</p>

- Visa 宣布扩展全球稳定币结算试点计划，新增五个区块链网络。  
- 年化稳定币结算量已达到 70 亿美元，较上季度增长 50%。  
- 稳定币支付正逐步成为主流支付基础设施的重要组成部分。

VISA is increasing its reliance on stablecoin settlements, making crypto payments increasingly certain.