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Announced at SIBOS 2025, the initiative aims to unlock liquidity, reduce settlement times, and give businesses greater flexibility in managing international payouts.
For years, global transactions have relied on slow, costly rails that require businesses to park large amounts of capital in advance. With the new pilot, Visa is testing stablecoin prefunding as an alternative funding source, enabling financial institutions to cover payouts while maintaining their working capital.
Chris Newkirk, President of Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa, expressed his dissatisfaction. “Cross-border payments have been stuck in outdated systems for far too long,” he said. “Visa Direct’s new stablecoins integration lays the groundwork for money to move instantly across the world, giving businesses more choice in how they pay.”
A new model for liquidity management
The prefunding process enables businesses to deposit stablecoins with Visa Direct, treating them as equivalent to cash on hand. Funds are then made available for payouts in local currencies, providing banks, remittance providers, and other financial institutions with a faster and more predictable method for settling transactions.
 
The model also brings new advantages for treasury operations. Instead of tying up funds for days, institutions can move money in minutes. Stablecoins also serve as a consistent settlement layer, minimizing risks associated with currency volatility across different markets.
Visa has not disclosed which stablecoins are being used in the pilot, but said it is working with select partners that meet specific criteria. Broader availability is expected to roll out in 2026.
This pilot builds on Visa’s ongoing efforts to integrate blockchain programmability with its global payments network. The company has previously tested the waters with crypto-linked payment cards and stablecoin settlements in partnership with Circle. This time, they’re using stablecoins directly within Visa Direct’s prefunding process.
For businesses, this shift could mean an upgrade in speed. It also opens the door to reduced costs, quicker access to working capital, and treasury operations that are less exposed to volatility. And although end users will still receive funds in their local currencies, the system behind those payments may be on the verge of a major transformation.
Ripple’s dual approach to transforming cross-border payments
While Visa experiments with stablecoin integration, Ripple has emerged as a major player in the cross-border payment revolution with a complementary two-pronged strategy: its native digital asset XRP and the recently launched RLUSD stablecoin.
XRP has been specifically designed for cross-border payments since its launch in 2012, serving as a bridge currency that enables instant exchanges between different currencies. The digital asset settles transactions in 3-5 seconds with fees as low as $0.0002 per transaction—a dramatic improvement over traditional SWIFT transfers that can take 1-5 business days and cost significantly more.
Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution utilizes XRP to eliminate the need for pre-funded nostro accounts, thereby freeing up billions of dollars in trapped capital for financial institutions. Major banks, including Santander, SBI Holdings, PNC Bank, and MUFG, have integrated XRP into their payment infrastructure through RippleNet, which now processes over $70 billion in payment volume across 90+ markets.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has projected that XRP could account for 14% of cross-border payment volume currently handled by SWIFT within five years, signaling the digital asset’s growing institutional acceptance.