Visa has added the Monad network to its stablecoin settlement program, the Monad Foundation announced on November 10. Participating card issuers and acquirers can now settle their obligations to Visa in stablecoins on the Monad blockchain. Visa Monad is thus the latest addition to a list that already includes Ethereum, Solana, Base and other networks. Nothing changes for cardholders and merchants – the move concerns settlement behind the scenes.
Visa Monad: what was announced
According to the Monad Foundation’s announcement, Visa now supports Monad as a stablecoin settlement network. The release quotes Dan Roesbery, Vice President, Global Onchain Partnerships at Visa: the goal is to give partners the flexibility to settle on the blockchain networks that best meet their needs, and adding Monad is another step toward a multi-chain settlement infrastructure for stablecoin-enabled payments.
Visa had not published its own press release at the time of our research; the announcement came from the Monad Foundation but includes the Visa executive’s quote. The release also leaves several details open:
- It does not say which stablecoins will settle on Monad.
- It names no issuers or acquirers already using Monad.
- There are no figures on volumes on Monad.
How stablecoin settlement works at Visa
In a card payment, the customer only sees the transaction at the checkout. Behind the scenes, funds then have to be settled between Visa, the cardholders’ banks and the merchants’ banks. This settlement traditionally runs over banking rails and, according to the Monad release, follows a five-business-day schedule. Weekends and holidays delay it.
With blockchain settlement, participating institutions can make these payments in stablecoins – including outside banking hours. For card issuers that already work with stablecoins, the Monad Foundation says part of the conversion between stablecoins and fiat also falls away.
The program so far
On April 29, 2026, Visa added five more blockchains to what was then a pilot program: Arc (from Circle), Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo. Together with the already supported Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar, that made nine. At the time, Visa put its annualized settlement run rate at $7 billion, up 50 percent from the previous quarter, with more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in over 50 countries.
The Monad release cites more recent figures from Visa: as of September 2026, the annualized stablecoin settlement run rate stood at $25 billion, roughly ten times the level a year earlier, with more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs live. One caveat: an annualized rate extrapolates the current pace over a full year. It refers to Visa’s entire program, not to Monad.
What Monad brings technically
Monad is a Layer 1 blockchain that is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). For Visa’s partners, that is probably the most important point: those already using Ethereum-based custody, wallet and compliance tooling can typically extend it to Monad rather than build new integrations, according to the Monad Foundation.
The foundation gives the following performance figures (self-reported, not independently verified):
- 10,000 transactions per second,
- 400-millisecond block times,
- finality after 800 milliseconds,
- more than 200 independently operated validators in over 30 countries,
- operation on consumer-grade hardware.
Fast finality is meant to give acquirers more predictable settlement cycles: a transaction is final moments after submission.
Private Settlement: not yet available
Confidentiality is a key hurdle for banks settling onchain. On a public blockchain, amounts and counterparties are generally visible – a problem for financial institutions because they reveal business relationships and volumes. Monad is developing a feature called “Private Settlement” for this. It is meant to let institutions keep sensitive details confidential while still sharing them with auditors and regulators. The feature is designed to run directly on the network, so private transactions can use the same liquidity as everything else.
Important: Private Settlement is not live yet. According to the release, Visa partners will benefit from it “in coming months”. There is no specific date.
What it means for issuers, acquirers and developers
For institutions already participating in Visa’s program, Monad is an additional option, not an obligation. It is mainly interesting for providers whose infrastructure is built on EVM tooling anyway – such as crypto exchanges, wallet providers or neobanks with stablecoin cards. They can reuse the same custody and compliance processes and do not need to introduce a new toolchain.
At the same time, every additional chain shifts part of the risk assessment to the partners: anyone settling via Monad depends on that network’s availability and stability and still carries the issuer risk of the respective stablecoin. For treasury and risk teams, this means assessing network outages, bridge questions and key custody just as they would for any other blockchain. Developers in the Monad ecosystem, on the other hand, are likely to benefit mainly from visibility: being on Visa’s network list is an argument with enterprise customers who have so far only considered Ethereum or Solana.
Our take
For Monad, joining Visa’s program is above all a signal to institutional users. Whether it leads to meaningful volume is open: the release names neither participating institutions nor the stablecoins used. Visa itself is clearly pursuing a multi-chain strategy and lets partners choose from many networks. There, Monad competes directly with other EVM networks such as Base, which recently stepped up with 200-millisecond blocks in the Denim upgrade.
The broader trend is clear: large payment and financial companies are moving parts of their settlement onto blockchains, whether through their own tokens such as JPM Coin on Ethereum or through regulated stablecoins. With the GENIUS Act and decisions such as the OCC approval for Ripple’s trust bank, the US regulatory framework is also becoming more tangible. Whether privacy features like Private Settlement remove the last hurdle for banks will only become clear once they are actually available.
