This is a level that seemed like a fantasy a couple of years ago. The first participants — Cross River Bank (Total assets: ~$9.0 billion) and Lead Bank (Total assets: ~$3.1 billion) — are already conducting real settlements with #Visa via #Solana .
On December 16, 2025, Visa officially launched USDC settlement (Circle’s stablecoin) on the Solana blockchain for American banks and fintech companies. The main partners and “pioneers” were:Cross River Bank — a key banking partner for many fintech giants and crypto companies (including Circle, the issuer of USDC). As part of this initiative, the bank uses the Highnote platform (a card issuing and acquiring platform) for the technical implementation of settlements.Lead Bank — a technology-focused bank that, under the leadership of Jackie Reses, is actively integrating blockchain solutions into traditional banking . Why is this important for fintech? Previously, settlements between Visa and banks were made exclusively in fiat currencies through traditional banking networks (ACH or SWIFT), which took days and were limited to business hours . Now these banks and their fintech clients have received the following benefits:
24/7 settlements: Money can be received even on weekends and holidays.
Speed: Near-instant funds movement with 7-day-a-week settlement availability (vs traditional 5 business days).
Treasury efficiency: Fintech companies (e.g. neobanks or payment services) serviced by Cross River or Lead Bank can manage liquidity faster, as part of the back-end infrastructure of one of the world's largest payment systems now runs on a public blockchain, and not just on classic private networks.
This is no longer just a marketing pilot or experiment — this is a full-fledged production environment with real banks and real money: although the volume of this program has reached more than $3.5 billion annualized, on the scale of the global Visa network (which processes over $17 trillion annually), this is only ~0.02% of the potential. Scale matters . So in your opinion, will Visa be able to implement its existing customer base on the blockchain ?
