Visa Adds Base, Polygon, Tempo, Arc and Canton to Pilot

Visa expanded its global stablecoin settlement pilot on Wednesday by adding Base, Polygon, Tempo, Arc and Canton, increasing the number of supported networks to nine and raising the program’s annualized settlement run rate to $7 billion.

The company reported a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase in blockchain settlement volume, with the run rate rising from about $4.7 billion to $7 billion in a single quarter.

Base and Polygon are Ethereum scaling networks. Arc and Tempo are layer-1 chains that focus on stablecoins and payments, and Canton offers configurable privacy controls designed for institutional use. These additions join the pilot’s existing support for Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche and Stellar.

Visa describes the pilot as a cross-chain settlement layer that lets businesses and financial institutions settle payments in stablecoins across different blockchains while connecting those rails to Visa’s broader payment network.

The company said it now supports more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs operating in over 50 countries, linking digital-dollar rails to traditional card infrastructure.

Visa has taken direct technical roles with several of the new networks. The company is a design partner for Arc and has become a validator on Tempo and Canton, positions that involve participation in network operations and governance.

According to Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, “Our partners are building in a multi-chain world, and they expect their options to reflect that reality. Expanding our stablecoin settlement pilot program to more blockchains means our partners can choose the networks that best fit their needs, while relying on Visa to provide a common settlement layer across all of them.”

The expansion comes as payments firms and financial institutions continue experiments with stablecoins and blockchain rails for cross-border and near-instant settlement.