Visa-Bridge link-up extends the stablecoin adoption narrative
Cardholders to make purchases with stablecoin balances at merchants across several Latin American countries
hodim/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
A household name is teaming up with a stablecoin platform in a bid to bring tokenized dollars into everyday life.
That would be payments giant Visa, which is now launching stablecoin-linked cards.
What does that even mean? Essentially, fintech developers using Bridge can offer these cards to their customers, who can then make purchases at any merchant location that accepts Visa.
Bridge deducts funds from the cardholder’s stablecoin balance and converts the balance into fiat so the merchant gets paid in their local currency. The card programs are starting in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Chile.
Stablecoins are a roughly $230 billion market. We’ve written before about how industry watchers expect this space to multiply into the trillions of dollars in the coming years.
Why this space is poised to grow substantially doesn’t seem too difficult a concept.
“By enabling fast, cheap, global payments, among other uses, stablecoins have become one of crypto’s most obvious killer apps,” a16z noted in a 2024 State of Crypto report.
More people than ever seem to be paying attention now, especially as tokenized money market funds — viewed by some as a sort of yield-bearing alternative to stablecoins — also gain steam.
A look at a Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee presentation (dated today) discusses stablecoins’ potential to “catalyse structural changes” across bank deposits, the Treasury market and monetary supply.
You might remember Bridge being in the news last October, when Stripe said it would acquire the company. The $1.1 billion deal closed in February.
Architect Partners’ Eric Risley called the deal “the most important M&A transaction to date for our industry” at the time. It offered more evidence that stablecoin-based payments have compelling benefits even to non-crypto companies, he added.
It would seem integrating stablecoins into Visa’s existing network furthers that narrative.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
