What's Next For the Future of Stablecoins?
In a span of two days, three announcements in September showed how quickly stablecoins are moving into the financial mainstream.
Visa disclosed explosive growth in stablecoin settlement and a new financing structure to support it. Nacha created a formal group to study how digital assets fit alongside established payment systems. U.S. Bank tested a stablecoin of its own on a public blockchain.
None of these announcements, taken alone, remakes the financial system. However, banks and payment networks are no longer treating stablecoins merely as an experiment on the fringe of finance. They are starting to build the rules, credit facilities and operational infrastructure needed to use them as money.
Visa’s $20B milestone and the problem that came with it
Visa reported on September 8 that its stablecoin settlement volume had topped a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times its level a year earlier. More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs now operate on the Visa network, including the Slash Global Card.³ Payment volume across Visa-branded stablecoin-linked cards is up nearly 200% year over year.
Visa began testing USDC settlement in March 2021 and expanded the program to merchant acquirers in September 2023. Mastercard launched broader, end-to-end stablecoin capabilities in April 2025. Stablecoin-linked cards now let users draw on token balances while paying through the card networks’ existing merchant infrastructure.
But, according to Visa, that rapid growth has created a new problem: somebody must finance the interval between a card purchase and the cardholder’s repayment.
Visa is addressing the gap with Credit Coop, which provides stablecoin-denominated revolving credit facilities secured by card receivables. With each program’s authorization, it receives daily settlement records directly from Visa. That lets lenders size advances and verify repayment against both Visa’s data and the program’s onchain history, rather than relying on the borrower’s figures alone.
The arrangement uses a smart contract called the Spigot. Cardholder repayment proceeds pass through the contract before reaching the program operator. The Spigot first pays interest and replenishes the credit line, then releases the remainder. In effect, it is an automated version of a lender-controlled lockbox; it prevents pledged cash from being diverted and makes smaller facilities economical to operate.
Visa says Credit Coop has financed more than $2.5 billion in cumulative settlement volume since 2023, with no defaults across participating facilities. Its infrastructure has processed more than 3,000 borrowing events and more than 9,000 repayments onchain.
For all the attention paid to stablecoins as a new form of money, the more consequential development may be the financial infrastructure emerging around them. If stablecoin-linked cards continue growing at their current pace, major payment networks are likely to institutionalize not only stablecoin settlement, but also the smart contracts and onchain credit facilities that keep those programs funded.
Nacha starts asking the stablecoin question
On September 9, Nacha—the organization that governs the ACH Network—announced the formation of a Next-Gen Currency Project Team within its Payments Innovation Alliance.
In other words, one of the most influential institutions in U.S. bank payments is formally examining how stablecoins and tokenized deposits could fit alongside traditional payment systems. Nacha CEO Jane Larimer said in the announcement that while cryptocurrency is “gaining popularity and acceptance, there are also many questions.”
Molly Woodman, a co-leader of the project team and senior policy adviser at the Digital Sovereignty Alliance, emphasized education rather than rapid adoption. The group plans to create industry resources, monitor regulation and examine the operational implications of connecting digital assets with traditional payments.
That mandate reflects how the Payments Innovation Alliance operates. It is not the part of Nacha that writes or enforces ACH rules. It is a forum of banks, payment companies, technology providers and other stakeholders that studies emerging issues and develops tools intended to guide the industry.
A new project team is therefore less an endorsement than a signal of institutional attention. It shows where questions are accumulating among payments professionals.
Nacha and the Alliance have spent the past several years publishing introductory material on cryptocurrency, digital assets and their payment uses. Creating a dedicated team for stablecoins and tokenized deposits—and asking an outside digital-asset policy organization to help lead it—represents a more focused posture.
It does not mean stablecoins are about to become part of the ACH Network. It does mean they have moved beyond the category of a peripheral crypto experiment. The institutions responsible for conventional payments now consider them important enough to study systematically.
Big banks are making a move
On September 9, U.S. Bank announced that it had completed a live cross-border pilot using USBDC, its proprietary dollar-backed stablecoin, on the Stellar blockchain.
U.S. Bank plans to explore USBDC for business customers and institutional services including cross-border treasury operations, liquidity management and the movement of collateral. The bank has not announced plans to make USBDC available to retail customers.
The test reflects growing institutional interest in stablecoins following the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025. The law created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, requiring permitted issuers to maintain at least one dollar of approved liquid reserves—such as cash, insured bank deposits or short-term Treasury bills—for every dollar of tokens in circulation.
Stablecoins are designed to hold a fixed value, making them more useful for payments and money movement than for speculation. Banks have also developed related products that are not stablecoins in the strict sense. JPMorgan’s JPM Coin, for example, represents commercial-bank deposits transferred over a permissioned blockchain.
Slash: Where stablecoins are nothing new
Slash has supported native USDC and USDT payments since May 2025 and has already processed nearly $3 billion in inbound and outbound onchain transactions.⁴ Payments settle into USD automatically, so businesses get the speed of stablecoins without managing an exchange account or crypto wallet. Dollar balances are FDIC insured up to $150 million.¹, ²
Slash Global Cards let customers spend their funds anywhere Visa is accepted, while the Global USD Account gives businesses in more than 130 countries a straightforward way to hold and move dollars. There’s no need to establish a U.S. entity up front: eligible businesses can use their existing registration in their home country to access U.S. financial services.
Build stablecoins into your business before they become standard. Get started with Slash today.
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