The traditional payment network is integrating more public chains. The addition of Monad as a settlement network option by Visa means that institutions can choose different blockchains to handle fund settlements between payment institutions based on their needs in the future.

On November 10, Visa incorporated the public chain Monad into its settlement network. Issuing institutions and acquiring institutions participating in Visa related programs can now use Monad for on-chain settlements.

This collaboration does not mean that consumers will directly use Monad when swiping their cards, nor does it mean that Visa will migrate all payment operations to public chains. It primarily targets the fund settlement process between payment institutions: after consumers complete card transactions, involved parties such as issuing institutions and acquiring institutions still need to complete fund clearing and settlement through the Visa network, while the blockchain provides a new channel for fund transfers in this process.

For Visa, the significance of adding Monad lies in expanding the network options for partner institutions; for Monad, entering Visa's settlement system brings opportunities to engage with traditional financial institutions and payment businesses.

Why does Visa continue to increase support for public chains?

This is not Visa's first attempt to integrate settlement operations with blockchain.

In April this year, Visa announced the addition of five networks: Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo. At that time, its settlement pilot already supported nine blockchains, including previously used Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar.

With the addition of Monad, Visa's multi-chain layout has further expanded.

Different networks have different roles: Ethereum has a mature asset and application ecosystem; Solana emphasizes high throughput; Base connects to the Coinbase ecosystem; Canton focuses on privacy and compliance in institutional financial scenarios; Tempo builds infrastructure around payments and fund flows.

Visa does not require all institutions to use the same public chain but hopes that partners can choose a settlement network based on cost, speed, liquidity, privacy, and compliance needs.

This is also the biggest difference between traditional payment institutions and single public chain projects: what Visa needs is not the transaction activity itself on a particular chain, but infrastructure that can sustainably support the flow of institutional funds.

Why do institutions need on-chain privacy?

The entry of Monad into Visa's settlement network also includes another noteworthy progress: Private Settlement.

Monad is developing this privacy settlement feature aimed at institutions, planning to launch it in the coming months. Its goal is to allow institutions to hide certain sensitive transaction information when using open networks while still permitting auditing institutions and regulatory agencies to view relevant data after obtaining authorization.

This addresses a practical issue faced by public chains when entering institutional financial services.

On ordinary public chains, transaction addresses, amounts of funds, and transfer records are usually publicly queryable. For individual users, transparency helps verify transactions; however, for banks, payment companies, and large enterprises, displaying all fund flows publicly may expose vendor relationships, client information, settlement scales, and business strategies.

For example, a payment institution needs to settle funds with a large number of partners daily. If the transaction amounts, collection addresses, and fund flows are all public, competitors might infer its business scale and relationships from on-chain data.

Private Settlement aims to find a balance between the two: commercial sensitive information does not have to be disclosed to all on-chain observers, while auditing and regulation can still obtain access when necessary.

This is not simply about completely hiding transactions; rather, it attempts to establish a controllable information disclosure mechanism.

Notably, this feature of Monad is still in the development stage and cannot be regarded as a mature institutional privacy settlement solution that is already in a production environment.

After $20 billion, Visa's on-chain settlement scale continues to grow

Visa's expansion of public chain support reflects that its on-chain settlement business has already formed a certain scale.

According to data disclosed by Visa in September of this year, its annualized run rate for on-chain settlements has exceeded $20 billion, up more than 15 times year-on-year.

However, during the earnings call on October 27, Visa provided updated data: the annualized run rate has exceeded $25 billion, which is approximately 10 times year-on-year growth.

The annualized run rate here is the annual scale calculated based on the current business speed and does not represent that Visa has actually completed $25 billion in settlements in the past 12 months, nor does it indicate that all these funds have flowed through Monad.

The payment card business is also expanding. As of the latest disclosure, Visa has over 225 card projects globally associated with relevant digital asset payment operations, covering more than 50 countries and regions.

This indicates that blockchain settlements are no longer just small-scale technical experiments carried out by payment companies; they are beginning to integrate with actual issuing, acquiring, and fund management operations.

For issuing institutions, on-chain settlement can reduce limitations posed by traditional bank operating hours, allowing funds to continue flowing during weekends and holidays; for Visa, more settlement networks mean it can provide more flexible infrastructure for partners in different regions and various business models.

The competition among public chains is entering the institutional payment phase

In the past, competition among public chains mainly revolved around TPS, Gas fees, ecosystem scale, and the number of developers.

However, as traditional financial institutions begin to use public chains for actual fund settlements, the competition standards are also changing.

Institutions not only need transaction speed but also require stable network operation, predictable settlement costs, sufficient asset liquidity, and privacy mechanisms that can meet auditing and regulatory requirements.

This explains why Visa is simultaneously laying out different types of networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Base, Canton, and Tempo, rather than betting on a single public chain.

For Monad, connecting to the Visa network can increase its institutional application scenarios, but what ultimately determines the scale of subsequent business is still how many issuing institutions and acquiring institutions actually choose this network, as well as whether Private Settlement can be smoothly realized.

For Visa, the multi-chain layout helps to avoid the constraint of its settlement business being limited by the performance, liquidity, or technical route of a particular blockchain.

The addition of Monad by Visa reflects not merely a payment company embracing public chains, but rather the restructuring of the underlying settlement infrastructure by traditional payment networks. In the future, the competition among public chains may include not only who can handle more transactions but also who can truly undertake the flow of funds from banks, payment institutions, and enterprises.

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