Visa expands crypto strategy as quarterly revenue climbs 14%

The company’s fiscal third-quarter results beat analyst expectations, fueled by a 10% increase in payments volume and a 13% rise in cross-border transactions. Despite the growth, shares dipped roughly 1% in after-hours trading. Visa is now positioning itself as a network-agnostic facilitator, avoiding direct competition with stablecoin issuers like Circle or Tether. Instead, the firm is building the Visa Stablecoin Platform, a beta-stage suite of tools for minting and managing digital assets. This initiative currently supports nine blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, and Base, with an annualized settlement run rate reaching $7 billion by March.

Central to this roadmap is OpenUSD, which will serve as the inaugural asset on the new platform. While the move signals a deeper commitment to the ecosystem, leadership emphasized that their strategy remains multi-chain and multi-coin. Beyond stablecoins, the company is leveraging its 2024 acquisition of Pismo to integrate tokenized deposits, allowing banks to transform traditional holdings into programmable digital money. On the consumer front, Visa is testing AI-agent payment credentials, partnering with OpenAI to develop systems where software agents execute transactions within defined security parameters. These developments reflect a push to modernize back-end settlement while automating the front-end shopping experience.