Visa launches enterprise stablecoin platform for banks and fintechs to mint and manage stablecoins

Visa has unveiled the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), enabling financial institutions, fintechs, and crypto-native firms to issue, manage, and integrate stablecoins starting with Open USD, a dollar-backed stablecoin developed by the Open Standard consortium.

The platform offers wallet infrastructure via a Wallet-as-a-Service model, allowing institutions to mint and burn stablecoins, manage treasury operations, and connect on-chain wallets to existing payment systems, with Visa among 140+ backers including Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase.

The launch intensifies competition for Circle, whose USDC has long led the regulated stablecoin market. Open USD redistributes reserve earnings to ecosystem participants rather than concentrating them with the issuer, directly targeting Circle's business model even as Circle recently secured approval for a U.S. national trust bank.

Visa's enterprise stablecoin platform is a significant signal for African fintechs and banks particularly those in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and Egypt that institutional-grade stablecoin infrastructure is moving from experimental to operational.

African financial institutions that have been watching the stablecoin space from the sidelines now face a clearer on-ramp: Visa's network reach and compliance controls lower the technical and regulatory barrier to integrating programmable dollar-denominated settlement into existing payment flows.