Visa CEO says firm will not pick winners as 140 firms back stablecoins

Visa Inc. will not pick winners among the proliferating stablecoin market, its chief executive said, as the payments giant adopts a multi-coin, multi-chain approach to digital dollar settlement.

"Our role is not to pick winners," Visa's chief executive officer said. "We will remain multi-coin and multi-chain."

The comments come as more than 140 companies, including Mastercard, Coinbase, BlackRock, Stripe and Standard Chartered, have joined the Open USD consortium backing a new dollar-pegged stablecoin designed for business payments. Visa itself has added support for tokens including USDC, PYUSD, USDG and RLUSD across blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Base and Polygon.

The stance positions Visa to benefit from stablecoin proliferation regardless of which token gains corporate traction, as the network processes settlement across multiple rails. The US stablecoin market has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars in supply following last year's passage of the GENIUS Act, which created the first federal framework for payment stablecoins with rules on reserves, issuer standards and oversight.

Mastercard, Visa's main rival in payments, has taken a more active role by joining the Open Standard-led consortium and agreeing to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for as much as $1.8 billion earlier this year. The Open USD token, expected to launch later this year under the ticker OUSD, will distribute reserve earnings among participating partners rather than concentrating them with a single issuer — a structure that challenges the model used by Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, which together dominate the stablecoin market.

For Visa, the multi-chain strategy reflects a broader push to make its network relevant across different settlement rails. The company has been adding stablecoin capabilities and building interoperability, identity and compliance services that link traditional finance to blockchain infrastructure. Visa cut about 2,600 technology jobs earlier this year as it pivots toward digital asset infrastructure, according to reports.

The stablecoin market has grown into a sector worth hundreds of billions of dollars, with Tether and Circle controlling the majority of supply. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in the US last year, set clearer compliance requirements, encouraging banks and payment processors to move more assertively into tokenized money. Open Standard founding chief executive Zach Abrams has described the project as a response to barriers companies face when using stablecoins at scale, including high costs and limited governance influence.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.