Visa constructed the world’s largest fee community that pushes practically $16 trillion in funds by means of its digital pipes. Now it desires to do the identical for lending on the earth of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The report, titled Stablecoins Past Funds: The Onchain Lending Alternative, reframes decentralized finance as “onchain finance” – a deliberate rebrand geared toward making decentralized credit score sound suitable with establishments within the period of the GENIUS Act – and descriptions how banks and personal credit score funds might plug into it.
Visa envisions establishments performing as liquidity suppliers to programmable lending protocols, whereas it provides the information, compliance, and infrastructure that make participation viable. The fee community believes that its acquainted title and trusted rails would entice establishments – with their trillions in capital – to come back onboard.
Visa’s whitepaper marks a transparent shift in tone from crypto experimentation to institutional infrastructure. The corporate says the rising “onchain finance” market has already issued greater than $670 billion in stablecoin loans since 2020, with lending exercise reaching new highs in mid-2025.
That scale, Visa argues, reveals stablecoins have developed past buying and selling instruments to turn into the spine of automated credit score markets that run constantly and settle immediately.
For example the mannequin, the report highlights three examples the place stablecoin-based credit score is already performing at scale.
Morpho, a liquidity “meta-layer,” connects institutional wallets and exchanges like Coinbase, Ledger, and Bitpanda, permitting debtors to submit tokenized bitcoin as collateral for USDC loans. Credit score Coop, which Visa immediately companions with, makes use of sensible contracts to separate and redirect service provider receivables.
And lastly, Huma Finance which helps cross-border working-capital loans, automating provider funds and recycling liquidity to generate double-digit annual yields.
Because the report outlines, Visa’s technique seems loads prefer it does for TradFi. It doesn’t plan to subject tokens or immediately fund loans. Fairly, it is a expertise play with out publicity to counterparty lending threat.
As an alternative, the fee community desires to personal the rails: the APIs, analytics, and settlement methods that enable programmable credit score to plug into the normal monetary world. It would not be concerned in crypto initiatives, simply facilitate the connections between them and TradFi.
Simply because it as soon as turned card funds into a worldwide community, Visa now hopes to do the identical for onchain credit score, positioning itself because the infrastructure layer of programmable finance.
