Visa and Mastercard used this week’s earnings calls to deliver a restrained view of stablecoins in daily payments. Visa CEO Ryan McInerny said that in the U.S., consumers already have easy ways to pay with digital dollars through checking and savings accounts, and the company does not see strong product-market fit for stablecoin-based consumer payments in digitally developed markets. Mastercard sounded more receptive, but its comments still placed stablecoins on the infrastructure side rather than at the center of a near-term payments shift.
Visa says existing payment rails already solve the consumer use case
McInerny argued that U.S. consumers are not lacking payment options today. That is the key point. Stablecoins are often promoted as a faster way to move money directly between parties on a blockchain without relying on banks or card networks. Traditional payments can take days to settle, especially across borders, while stablecoin transfers can clear in seconds and remain available 24/7, including weekends and holidays.
Even with those advantages, Visa’s position was clear: in mature digital markets, the benefits have not translated into meaningful consumer payment demand. The company has experimented with stablecoin settlement using USDC, but management did not present crypto as something that is ready to reshape the core card business.
Mastercard is more open, but still sees trading as the main use case
Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach took a less skeptical tone, saying the company is “leaning in” to technologies such as stablecoins and AI-powered agents. Still, he framed Mastercard’s role as one of enablement. The company is not presenting itself as the force leading a wholesale change in how people pay.
Miebach said stablecoins are simply another currency that Mastercard can support inside its network. He pointed to work with MetaMask, Ripple and Gemini, and said the company has made progress enabling asset purchases, facilitating transactions and supporting stablecoin settlement across its network. Yet the practical takeaway was unchanged: the dominant use case for stablecoins today remains trading, not payments.
Large on-chain volumes have not changed the card networks’ near-term stance
Neither payments giant is absent from blockchain infrastructure. Mastercard has run pilots around on-chain identity and settlement tools, and Visa has tested USDC settlement. Even so, both companies indicated that crypto is neither a near-term threat to their core operations nor an immediate growth engine.
That caution stands in contrast to the scale of activity on public blockchains. Glassnode data showed that Bitcoin settled more than $25 trillion in transactions in 2025, above Visa’s $17 trillion and Mastercard’s $11 trillion combined. Bitcoin volume includes high-frequency flows and large institutional transfers, so it is not a direct proxy for retail payments. The number still points to expanding blockchain demand across financial applications.
JPMorgan described stablecoins in a September report as a digital, on-chain form of fiat money that is easy to self-custody and transfer, and especially fast for cross-border movement. The bank said stablecoins could in some cases be better than fiat because of lower costs and round-the-clock settlement. At the same time, the report warned about run risk. Analyst Joyce Ho cited the collapse of TerraUSD in May 2022 as a reminder that stress can unfold very quickly in an asset class that trades all day, every day.
SoFi takes a more aggressive position on crypto services
While Visa and Mastercard kept the discussion measured, digital bank and fintech company SoFi is moving more directly into crypto. After the company beat Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter, its stock briefly rose and later turned lower, now down 5%.
SoFi said more than 63,000 accounts were actively buying, selling and holding digital assets in the fourth quarter of 2025, even though the option only became fully available in late December. CEO Anthony Noto told investors that the company is moving with urgency to lead the next phase of financial services through crypto and blockchain innovation backed by bank-grade stability and security.