The payment industry may seem "old," but it has always been one of the earliest and easiest segments of the financial system to be restructured by technology.

While the market is still debating whether "cryptocurrency is an asset," the two major payment giants—Visa and Mastercard—have reached a consensus on a more fundamental engineering issue: is there a more efficient settlement layer that can be embedded in the existing payment system rather than starting from scratch?

The answer is stablecoins.

Recently, Visa announced that it would open USDC settlements to banks in the U.S. through Solana; previously, Mastercard partnered with Ripple to test RLUSD-based transaction settlements on XRPL.

This is not a short-term pilot but rather a clear signal that global payment infrastructure is beginning to migrate to a new generation of settlement layers.

Visa: Making Stablecoins a "Settlement Plugin"

Visa's actions appear cutting-edge, but its logic remains highly restrained.

It did not choose to build a closed blockchain system; instead, it directly connected the Solana network with the USDC stablecoin to its settlement backend as an available option within the existing clearing process.

Core Data: In the U.S., institutions like Cross River Bank have already begun using USDC for settlements via Solana. Visa disclosed that the annualized settlement volume has exceeded $3.5 billion.

Seamless Experience: For consumers, the card-swiping experience remains unchanged.

For banks, this change is very intuitive: the previously dependent T+1/T+2 clearing rhythm has been compressed into a continuous 7×24 hour settlement, significantly reducing the time funds are in transit and liquidity occupation.

It is worth noting that Visa has not packaged this capability as a "financial paradigm shift" or "disruptive innovation." What it repeatedly emphasizes is standardization and productization—viewing stablecoin settlements as a deployable and replicable foundational capability.

This also explains why Visa recently launched a stablecoin consulting service: its goal is not to push banks to "turn to crypto," but to help them understand and access the next generation of settlement tools.

In this system, stablecoins are not independent financial products but rather foundational modules embedded in the payment network.

Mastercard: Building a "Compliance Connection Layer"

Unlike Visa's "direct connection to public chains," Mastercard has chosen a more complex path of "collaboration and connection."

Multi-chain Cooperation: It has not bet on a single path but has partnered with Ripple (XRPL), Gemini, and institutions in the Middle East.

Compliance Puzzle: It prefers to build a "pluggable compliance connection layer."

Mastercard's self-positioning is very clear: it does not attempt to become an extension of any public chain but places itself at the interface between the traditional financial system and on-chain settlement networks.

The core advantage of this architecture lies in flexibility—regardless of which type of stablecoin or technological path becomes mainstream in the future, Mastercard can quickly connect and adapt through integration. This model is particularly suitable for complex, high-compliance scenarios such as cross-border payments, B2B settlements, and RWA.

The Battle for the Settlement Layer Points to a $40 Trillion Redistribution

While the paths differ, Visa and Mastercard are highly aligned on one key judgment.

What they are truly concerned about is not the scale growth of a single stablecoin but whether future settlement activities will detach from the existing payment networks and complete a closed loop on a new technological layer.

Once fund flows can achieve point-to-point settlements on-chain, the intermediary value of traditional clearing networks will be reassessed. This is precisely why the two card organizations must intervene in advance and clarify their positions.

The mention of "stablecoins potentially reshaping the global $40 trillion credit market" in Visa's latest report is not a simple narrative of scale but a structural judgment: when settlement tools possess programmability, the underlying logic of credit issuance, risk control, and fund dispatch will also adjust accordingly.

Whoever controls the settlement layer is closer to defining the rules of next-generation capital flow.

This is a revolution occurring outside the public eye.

It is not a user-facing celebration but a technological migration happening within backend systems: quiet, gradual, but once completed, almost irreversible.

When the world's largest payment networks begin to view on-chain settlements as a foundational capability, blockchain is no longer an external variable in the financial system but is becoming part of its internal engineering.

Payments may still look the same, but the settlement logic behind them is entering a new technological phase.

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