Key Takeaways:
- Visa offers five additional blockchains, including Polygon, Base, Arc, Canton, and Tempo, to the stablecoin settlement program
- The network is achieving a run rate of $7B annualized, more than 50% in a quarter
- Polygon is the largest chain in terms of USD stablecoin received and spent
As the payments presented as stablecoins shift to real-world payments, Visa is gaining pace on its multi-chain strategy. The recent growth also includes five additional blockchains in its settlement network, making it much more flexible to partners.
Visa Expands to Five New Blockchains
Visa has introduced Polygon, Base, Arc, Canton, and Tempo to its global settlement program using stablecoins. This makes it a total of nine networks supported. It has been a decisive step to a multi-chain environment. Visa does not make use of one blockchain anymore; now partners are free to select the one that suits them best.
The program is scaling fast. Visa reported a $7 billion annualized settlement volume, up 50% in one quarter. This rate of growth is an indication that blockchain-based settlement is in demand within institutions.
Read More: Stablecoin Settlement Compared with SWIFT in Cross-Border Trade
Polygon Leads Among New Additions
Polygon is also the best new network to buy based on its dominance in the stablecoin activity. It already circulates a large proportion of the world’s USD- based transfers. Key performance highlights entail the following:
- 34% of all USD stablecoin transfers
- 54% of USDC transfers
- Millions of active users weekly
These indicators demonstrate that Polygon is already production-sized and can be used to realize actual financial settlement, instead of just experiments.
The world’s largest payment network settles stablecoins on Polygon.
Now supported on its global stablecoin settlement program, Visa’s partners can choose Polygon rails to move money instantly. pic.twitter.com/WlZKAYyae0
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) April 29, 2026
Real-World Usage Drives Selection
The infrastructure of Polygon enables high throughputs of transactions at low costs and rapid finalization. The transactions are normally settled within a few seconds and at minimal costs of less than one cent.
Major institutions, such as fintech companies and asset managers, have already used the network to settle. This has been the current adoption, which presumably led Visa to make the decision.
Multi-Chain Settlement Becomes Standard
The growth of Visa points to an industry trend. Financial institutions are now not devoting themselves to one blockchain. Rather, they are establishing connections between networks to:
- Access deeper liquidity
- Optimize costs
- Improve transaction speed
Visa is adding each blockchain to fulfill a separate purpose. Others are performance and cost-effectiveness oriented, whereas others are compliance oriented or financial niche-oriented.
Stablecoins Move Closer to Mainstream Payments
Global finance is turning into a stablecoin settlement layer. Visa has already launched over 130 card programs that connect to stablecoins in over 50 countries.
These applications enable users to use digital assets and allow merchants to convert them into fiat, bridging the two worlds of traditional finance and blockchain. These five blockchains enhance this infrastructure. It provides partners with additional avenues to transfer money in seconds, without using conventional banking rails.
Infrastructure Competition Intensifies
The race between blockchains is shifting toward real performance. The factors that are currently facing institutional adoption are speed, cost and reliability.
Polygon’s strong usage metrics, combined with Visa’s broader multi-chain expansion, show that the market is moving beyond experimentation. Blockchain networks are now competing to power actual global payment flows.
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