Visa built the world’s largest payments network that powers nearly $16 trillion in payments through its virtual channels. Now it wants to do the same with lending in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The report, titled Stablecoins beyond payments: the on-chain lending opportunity It reframes decentralized finance as “chain finance” (a deliberate rebranding aimed at making decentralized credit seem institutional-friendly in the era of the GENIUS Act) and outlines how banks and private credit funds could connect to it.
Visa envisions institutions acting as liquidity providers for programmable lending protocols, while also providing the data, compliance, and infrastructure that make participation viable. The payments network believes its household name and trusted pathways would attract institutions (with their billions in capital) to come on board.
Visa’s whitepaper marks a clear change in tone from crypto experimentation to institutional infrastructure. The company says the emerging “chain finance” market has already issued more than $670 billion in stablecoin loans since 2020, with lending activity reaching new highs in mid-2025.
That scale, Visa maintains, shows that stablecoins have evolved beyond trading tools to become the backbone of automated credit markets that run continuously and settle instantly.
To illustrate the model, the report highlights three examples where stablecoin-based credit is already working at scale.
Morpho, a liquidity “meta layer,” connects institutional wallets and exchanges such as Coinbase, Ledger, and Bitpanda, allowing borrowers to post tokenized bitcoins as collateral for USDC loans. Credit Coop, with which Visa partners directly, uses smart contracts to split and redirect merchants’ accounts receivable.
And finally, Huma Finance, which supports cross-border lending for working capital, automating payments to suppliers and recycling liquidity to generate double-digit annual returns.
As outlined in the report, Visa’s strategy closely resembles TradFi’s. It does not plan to issue tokens or fund loans directly. Rather, it is a technology bet with no exposure to counterparty lending risk.
Instead, the payments network wants to own the rails: the APIs, analytics, and settlement systems that allow programmable credit to plug into the traditional financial world. It would not be involved in crypto projects, it would only facilitate connections between them and TradFi.
Just as it once turned card payments into a global network, Visa now hopes to do the same with on-chain credit, positioning itself as the infrastructure layer of programmable finance.
