Visa has launched a USDC settlement service for financial institutions based in the United States, marking a major expansion of its stablecoin pilot program.

Per a Tuesday announcement, Visa’s stablecoin settlement service has now been made available in a handful of US-based banks that have already started settling transactions using Circle-issued USDC on the Solana blockchain.

Starting participants include Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, which are already moving USDC through Visa’s network.

In the future, Visa plans to use Arc, a new layer 1 blockchain developed by Circle, which it helped design as a formal partner.

Arc’s public testnet went live in late October with over 100 partners, including Visa, Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock.

Arc reportedly offers low fees, faster settlement, and enterprise-grade throughput.

Its purpose-built design offers the performance and scalability needed to help support Visa’s global commercial activity onchain, which makes it a strong candidate for institutional integration.

For now, Solana remains Visa’s primary network for stablecoin settlement in the US, offering a mature infrastructure that will let Visa deliver key features such as 7-day settlement windows, breaking away from the traditional Monday to Friday banking framework.

Other advantages include improved liquidity and treasury management, as well as interoperability across different payment systems, which brings meaningful improvements over traditional rails.

According to the global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, Rubail Birwadker, the US launch is part of the company’s broader plan to modernise its settlement infrastructure and to meet the rising demand of its institutional partners.

“Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement because our banking partners are not only asking about it — they’re preparing to use it,” Birwadker added.

The current expansion builds on Visa’s long-standing partnership with Circle that began with early pilots several years ago.

The payments giant has built up significant experience with USDC as part of those initial efforts.

Since then, the company has deepened its efforts to embed stablecoins into its infrastructure to secure an early mover advantage in what it sees as the future of programmable finance.

In fact, this year alone, the firm has accelerated its transition from a pilot-stage player to an active role in helping financial institutions adopt stablecoins for their operations, specifically targeting the US market, where the Trump administration has introduced regulations more favourable to the stablecoin sector.

Several major US-based platforms, including YouTube, Shopify, and Google Cloud, have integrated stablecoins into their payout and settlement systems.

Visa itself introduced stablecoin payouts for US creators last month as part of a pilot that seeks to provide infrastructure that allows businesses to fund wallets directly using fiat and deliver payouts in stablecoins.

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