Visa Adds Monad to Stablecoin Settlement Network as Run Rate Hits $25 Billion

Visa has added Monad to its stablecoin settlement network, extending a program whose annualized settlement run rate reached $25 billion by October 2026 — a tenfold jump year over year, according to figures the company reported.

The expansion follows rapid growth across the program's metrics. When Visa announced its April 2026 batch of supported chains, the annualized run rate stood at $7 billion, up 50% quarter over quarter. Six months later, the figure had nearly quadrupled to $25 billion.

What does the settlement program actually do?

The mechanics sit behind every card tap. When a consumer pays with a Visa card, funds must eventually move between the issuing bank and the merchant's acquiring bank. That reconciliation is settlement, and it traditionally runs over legacy banking rails.

Visa's program gives issuers and acquirers an alternative: settle in stablecoins over a public or institutional blockchain instead. The program now runs across 10 blockchains in all five of Visa's geographic regions and supports five stablecoins.

Adoption metrics have scaled alongside the run rate:

• More than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs are active worldwide
• Those programs operate in over 50 countries
• Transaction volumes on them are growing at more than 150% year over year

Monad was not an unknown quantity to Visa before the formal addition. The chain appeared in Visa's on-chain analytics with nearly 1 million stablecoin transactions in August 2026, indicating real usage ahead of the integration decision.

Why does Visa keep adding chains?

Visa has positioned itself as both "stablecoin agnostic" and "blockchain agnostic," declining to back a single winning chain or a single dollar token. The strategy treats blockchain infrastructure as interchangeable plumbing rather than a bet on any one network.

On some networks, Visa goes beyond using the rails. The company acts as a validator on certain chains, including Tempo and Canton, helping operate infrastructure rather than merely consuming it — a deeper operational commitment than a settlement integration alone.

What does inclusion mean for Monad?

For Monad, the addition functions as a credibility marker. Being named alongside Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche in a Visa settlement program signals that a major payments incumbent considers the chain usable for real money movement at scale.

The broader market signal matters more than any single chain. Visa's run rate grew from $7 billion to $25 billion within roughly a year, and the count of supported chains keeps rising, indicating sustained corporate demand for blockchain-based settlement rather than a pilot-stage experiment.

What constraints remain?

Settlement volumes are still small relative to Visa's fiat operations, keeping the program in a supporting role for now. Expanding across many chains adds operational complexity, and stablecoin regulation and network reliability remain unresolved questions.

The trajectory suggests Visa will continue adding chains and tokens as volumes compound; whether the $25 billion run rate keeps its triple-digit growth into 2027 will depend on regulatory clarity in Visa's key jurisdictions.

By Tom Whitfield