Stablecoins now handle around $315.6 billion in supply with daily transfers hitting $195.6 billion as of July 2026, fueling fierce competition over who manages the entire payment experience not just the transfer itself. Major payment networks like Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are upgrading infrastructure to support stablecoin settlement, while fintech and crypto firms chase dominance over customer accounts, cards, and services.
Visa doubled its stablecoin settlement volumes from $3.5 billion annualized in late 2025 to $7 billion by early 2026. It has since expanded a pilot allowing issuers and acquirers to settle obligations via stablecoins on selected blockchains. Mastercard followed suit by adding stablecoin support across multiple networks in June and moving to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion earlier this year. Stripe has integrated stablecoin acceptance and fiat settlement, acquiring Bridge to enhance its capacity to issue, transfer, and convert digital dollars.
These developments place stablecoins hand-in-hand with traditional payment rails, but the question of customer ownership remains open. Wirex’s CEO Pavel Matveev points out that payment networks facilitate connections between institutions and merchants, but issuers and fintech platforms own the customer-facing layers like accounts and cards. Through its banking-as-a-service model, Wirex provides stablecoin-linked products to exchanges, wallets, and other fintech partners, targeting the layer where most revenue originates, including interchange fees, foreign exchange, and product-linked balances.
