Visa Pilots Launches USDC Payments for Creators and Gig Workers

Visa is testing a new scheme that will allow companies to send payments directly to recipients' stablecoin wallets, while sending only traditional fiat US dollars.

Companies will pay in fiat US dollars, and recipients will receive payments in dollar-pegged stablecoins, such as Circle's USDC, the world's second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. It does not appear that companies will be able to send stablecoins directly through this scheme.

Visa did not specify if or when support for stablecoins other than USDC will be added, nor did it specify whether the service will be exclusively for USDC. Anyone wishing to use this service to receive payments will need to have both a stablecoin wallet and undergo traditional AML/KYC checks, and the pilot project is currently limited to US-based platforms and businesses.

Visa has described this service as useful for creators and the gig economy. For example, companies like TikTok or YouTube, which make small, irregular payments to millions of people worldwide, have not yet announced any partners.

Visa says it is in the process of onboarding partners, and expects broader access in the second half of 2026, depending on local regulations. This pilot project is coming as part of Visa Direct, the payments giant's service that allows users to make payments using its own payment rail, rather than, for example, two banks.

The payments giant has also not confirmed which payment rail the service will use, but it has recently been collaborating with Circle on stablecoin infrastructure.

In late October, Circle announced that Visa, along with companies like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, is one of the companies participating in its new public testnet for its Layer-1 blockchain network, Ark.

Circle Launches Ark Testnet, Including BlackRock, Visa, and AWS

Visa Eyes Stablecoins
Visa has been making increasingly aggressive moves in the stablecoin sector through 2025. In May, it invested an unspecified amount in London-based stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK as a "strategic investment" through its Visa Ventures arm.

Earlier this month, Visa released a report estimating the growing role of stablecoins in the $40 trillion global lending market. It stated that stablecoin-based loans could allow traditional institutions to access parts of that market through programmable, blockchain-based lending.

Visa believes stablecoins could enter the $40 trillion lending market.

Meanwhile, like rival Mastercard, Visa is expanding support for stablecoin-based crypto credit cards—including those from fintech Rain in the US and Bridge, a unit of payments giant Stripe, in Latin America.