Infini View | The Paradigm Shift of Payment Giants — A Deep Dive into Visa and Mastercard’s Stablecoin Strategy

The Paradigm Shift of Payment Giants: Visa and Mastercard’s Stablecoin War

The global payments system is undergoing a quiet yet profound transformation.

For decades, cross-border remittances have been plagued by high costs, lengthy settlement cycles, and a web of intermediaries — pain points deeply embedded in the financial infrastructure. The emergence of blockchain and stablecoins offered, for the first time, a faster, cheaper, and more transparent way to move value across borders.

As the crypto bubble deflated, stablecoins remained. They have evolved from speculative instruments into a new layer of global financial infrastructure — one that clears in seconds, operates around the clock, and is accessible to anyone with minimal friction. Today, this technological revolution has drawn the attention of the most powerful incumbents in finance: Visa and Mastercard.

Two Paths: The Bridge and the Fortress

If stablecoins are reshaping the nature of “money,” then Visa and Mastercard are competing for control over “how money moves.”

Visa’s approach is pragmatic and lightweight. Rather than issuing its own stablecoin, it aims to become a “super bridge” between traditional finance and blockchain networks. By embedding stablecoin settlement capabilities into its existing infrastructure, Visa hopes to let millions of merchants, banks, and financial institutions access the on-chain world seamlessly — not through disruption, but through evolution.

Mastercard, by contrast, is taking a heavier and more ambitious path. It doesn’t just want a bridge; it wants a fortress — a new network built from the ground up, with full control over its infrastructure and compliance standards. Through its Multi-Token Network (MTN) initiative, Mastercard is integrating native functions like custody, settlement, and identity verification. Reports even suggest it is in talks to acquire crypto custodian Zerohash, reinforcing its grip on the foundational layer.

Two strategies, two philosophies: one focuses on integration, the other on reinvention. Visa is “adapting and upgrading.” Mastercard is “disrupting and rebuilding.”

A Fork in Technical Philosophy

Visa’s strategy can be summed up as multi-chain aggregation. It has tested settlements on Ethereum, Solana, Stellar, and Avalanche, supporting stablecoins like USDC, PYUSD, and EURC. By offering open APIs, Visa enables banks and payment providers to perform on-chain settlement directly through its network.

Mastercard, on the other hand, leans toward native construction. Its MTN is designed as a long-term platform for experimentation and deployment — one capable of directly supporting CBDCs, NFTs, and stablecoins. For Mastercard, true leadership in the on-chain economy requires owning the underlying protocols and rules.

These two philosophies resemble grafting vs. regeneration: Visa grafts new branches onto an existing tree — plug-and-play. Mastercard cultivates a new tree from the roots — seeking to grow its own ecosystem in the forest of the future.

Ecosystem Strategy: Targeted Integration vs. Broad Experimentation

Visa’s partnerships are more focused. It works closely with stablecoin issuers such as Circle (USDC) and Paxos (PYUSD), while teaming up with Worldpay, Nuvei, Bridge, and Yellow Card to embed stablecoin functionality into merchant and settlement networks. This enterprise-first approach targets high-value, high-frequency B2B scenarios — shortening settlement times, improving cash efficiency, and later extending success to consumer use cases.

Mastercard’s approach is more expansive. At the infrastructure layer, it collaborates with Consensys, Fireblocks, MetaMask, and MoonPay; on the application side, it launched Web3 wallet payments with Immersve, enabling users to spend on-chain assets through Mastercard’s network.

It also drives the Crypto Credential initiative, partnering with exchanges in Latin America and Europe — such as Bit2Me, Mercado Bitcoin, and Lirium — to test “alias-based” cross-border payments. Users can transfer crypto simply by sending to a human-readable address like user.mastercard.

Meanwhile, Mastercard has piloted crypto card programs with Kraken and OKX, though its collaboration with Binance has ended in multiple countries — a sign that tightening regulation is pushing it toward stricter compliance boundaries.

Product Showdown: Making On-Chain Payments Usable

Among the many initiatives from both giants, two products stand out — Visa’s VTAP and Mastercard’s Crypto Credential.

VTAP (Visa Tokenized Asset Platform) is Visa’s “stablecoin-as-a-service” platform for institutions. It offers a full suite of tools for issuing, managing, and redeeming branded stablecoins — helping banks and financial institutions enter the tokenized asset space with ease. In doing so, Visa turns potential competitors into collaborators, anchoring them to its network.

Crypto Credential, meanwhile, represents Mastercard’s attempt to revolutionize the user experience. It replaces long, complex wallet addresses with simple aliases, while embedding Travel Rule compliance into the payment flow.

For users, it’s the first time sending crypto feels as easy as sending an email. For regulators, it offers a blueprint for traceable and controllable crypto payments.

Compliance: From Adaptation to Design

In recent years, stablecoin regulation has moved from ambiguity to clarity — and both Visa and Mastercard see this not as a barrier, but as a gateway.

Visa’s approach is to embrace and enable. It provides compliance tools for banks and payment processors, ensuring they can safely leverage on-chain settlement under regulatory frameworks.

Mastercard, by contrast, seeks to embed compliance directly into its products — making it a built-in service rather than an external requirement. Its Crypto Credential is a perfect example of this philosophy.

In short: Visa treats compliance as a condition to meet. Mastercard treats it as a capability to sell.

Short-Term and Long-Term Plays

In the short run, Visa’s strategy is likely to deliver results faster.

Its asset-light model allows it to scale quickly through existing infrastructure, particularly in B2B payments and cross-border settlements. Trials in 2025 already show Visa using stablecoin pre-funding to accelerate global merchant payouts in several regions.

But in the long term, Mastercard’s bet could prove more strategic. If it successfully controls the base layers of custody and settlement, it will gain greater pricing power and influence in the next phase of the on-chain economy — a high-risk, high-reward wager that could yield a moat far deeper than network effects alone.

Beyond Payments: Competing for Value Networks

Stablecoins are transforming “payments” into a contest over value networks. In the future, success won’t be measured by transaction volume but by who can better integrate, manage, and circulate diverse tokenized assets.

The tug-of-war between Visa and Mastercard ultimately drives the same outcome — global standardization and interoperability in payments. The line between traditional and decentralized finance is blurring fast. The future won’t be one replacing the other, but a deeply hybrid system: Banks will remain central, but their operations will increasingly resemble blockchain logic; Blockchains will stay decentralized, but their interfaces will look more and more like banks.

Epilogue: A Silent Revolution

When people talk about crypto, they often think of volatility and regulatory risk. But for Visa and Mastercard, crypto represents something more fundamental — an upgrade to financial infrastructure.

Stablecoins are not challengers; they are components of the next-generation financial operating system.This “stablecoin revolution,” led by the two payment giants, may not roar like Bitcoin did — but its impact will be deeper and longer-lasting.

It is quietly rewriting the logic of global money movement — and redefining what “payment” truly means.