Visa Bets Big on Stablecoins and AI for Future Growth
Visa Inc. (V) is increasingly betting on stablecoins and artificial intelligence (AI) as key growth drivers, positioning itself to capture more transaction volume as businesses adopt these technologies. In fiscal 2026, about 17% of Visa’s stablecoin-linked card volume came from business and commercial card programs, highlighting their potential to improve payment speed, liquidity, and settlement efficiency. The company now supports over 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume up nearly 200% year over year. Visa is exploring stablecoins for supplier payments, treasury operations, payouts, liquidity management, and cross-border commerce, with industry research estimating annual stablecoin payment volume at $401-$527 billion.
Visa is expanding its stablecoin ecosystem by supporting more than nine blockchains for settlement, allowing issuers and acquirers to settle obligations onchain. Its partnership with Bridge aims to extend stablecoin-linked cards to over 100 countries, enabling users to spend stablecoin balances across Visa’s merchant network. Additionally, the Visa Stablecoin Platform lets banks, fintechs, and payment providers mint, hold, transfer, and redeem stablecoins. The company’s stablecoin settlement volume has reached a $20 billion annualized run rate, up more than 15-fold from a year ago.
Beyond stablecoins, Visa’s Value-Added Services (VAS) business remains a strong earnings driver, with revenues rising to $3.8 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The company is also pushing into agentic commerce, where AI agents could search, compare, and buy for consumers. Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, the company is building tools that let AI agents use tokenized Visa credentials while managing permissions, authentication, and fraud risk. Visa’s Agentic Ready program is expanding testing, and its Trust Index found that 61% of U.S. consumers would trust Visa to handle AI-powered payments.
Financially, Visa’s core business remains solid, with processed transactions rising 10% year over year to 71.7 billion in the fiscal third quarter. The company’s strong cash generation supports shareholders, with $16.3 billion in net cash provided by operating activities during the first nine months of fiscal 2026. Visa returned $6.2 billion through dividends and share repurchases in the third quarter alone. Analysts estimate a 15.3% and 13.3% uptick in earnings per share for fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027, respectively, with revenues expected to grow 14.6% and 10.5% in the same periods.