Anchorage-Issued Stablecoins Gain Direct Settlement on VisaNet

Anchorage Digital Bank and Visa have opened VisaNet settlement to Anchorage-issued stablecoins, beginning with Western Union's USDPT, the companies announced Thursday. The arrangement lets Visa and eligible companies settle their obligations on the Visa network using USDPT, a dollar-pegged token issued and custodied by Anchorage Digital Bank — the first Anchorage-issued stablecoin to gain that status.

The deal establishes a framework for adding further Anchorage-issued tokens to VisaNet over time, according to the companies. For practitioners in payments and digital-asset infrastructure, the significance is straightforward: a stablecoin custodied at a federally chartered bank can now clear obligations across one of the world's largest card networks, rather than sitting at the edge of the payment system as an exchange or treasury instrument.

What does the arrangement change for issuers and settlement desks?

Anchorage operates what it bills as America's first federally chartered crypto bank, overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. That charter is the core of the pitch. Anchorage's co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley said: "Speed alone won't bring institutions onchain," arguing that institutions want "a regulated institution behind the money." The arrangement pairs stablecoin settlement speed with OCC-supervised banking safeguards — a combination that removes a compliance objection many bank treasury and payments teams have raised against offshore-issued tokens.

All Anchorage-issued stablecoins in its roster — including Tether's U.S.-regulated USAT, Western Union's USDPT and Ethena's USDtb — are redeemable one-to-one for dollars. The bank positions itself not merely as an issuer but as the custody and settlement layer beneath institutional stablecoin flows. Its counterparty settlement network, Atlas, handles off-exchange settlement, collateral management and cross-border transfers. The Visa agreement sits on top of that stack.

The deal also builds on Anchorage's recent role in the U.S.-Mexico remittance corridor, where it custodies tokens on both sides of one of the world's largest remittance routes. Connecting a token to VisaNet extends that footprint from corridor-specific settlement into mainstream merchant and bank payments worldwide.

Dan Roesbery, a Visa vice president for crypto partnerships, framed the USDPT support as giving partners "another trusted, institution-grade option" for settling with Visa.

Visa's stablecoin buildout continues

The arrangement is the latest step in Visa's steady integration of stablecoins into its settlement plumbing. The payments network has already:

• built a stablecoin settlement program spanning networks including Base and Polygon;
• launched a platform to help banks and fintech firms issue and move stablecoins;
• moved into onchain lending tied to its card products.

For Anchorage, the strategic objective is explicit: to become the settlement bank for stablecoins at institutional scale. The Visa framework advances that goal by attaching bank-custodied tokens to rails that already reach millions of acceptance points, without requiring merchants or banks to adopt new infrastructure at their end.

What comes next

The companies said support for additional Anchorage-issued stablecoins could follow the initial USDPT launch. The immediate practical question for issuers and payment processors is sequencing: which tokens — USAT, USDtb or later entrants — gain VisaNet settlement status, and on what timetable. Each addition would expand the set of obligations that can clear on-chain through a federally regulated bank, tightening the link between the regulated banking system and token-based settlement.

For now, USDPT is the proof of concept. Institutions watching this space should treat the framework, rather than the single token, as the operative development.