Stablecoins are making Visa and Mastercard harder to disrupt
Several developments point in the same direction:
• SoFi is moving its card program, expected to process more than $25B annually, to SoFiUSD settlement on Mastercard.
• Reap and Visa are expanding stablecoin-linked card issuing to 100+ markets globally.
• Visa is giving Credit Coop access to settlement data to support financing for card programs.
Card programs are becoming easier to launch, fund and run.
Running a card program means keeping funds available to meet settlement obligations.
Banking cutoffs and weekend closures can leave operators holding larger buffers than they would otherwise need.
Stablecoin settlement lets participants move those funds outside banking hours, reducing the need for large prefunded balances.
@creditcoop_xyz addresses the financing still required. Visa settlement data helps lenders assess exposure, while automated repayment from receivables gives them more control over getting paid.
Less idle capital and better access to financing could make more card programs viable to launch and scale, bringing more activity onto Visa and Mastercard, not less.
So stablecoins end up lowering the cost of participating in the networks they also compete with.
And those networks already have the merchant acceptance and consumer habits that new payment systems spend years trying to build.