To The Moon

For years, one of the simplest stablecoin theses has been:

Money moves onchain → traditional payment rails become less important → Visa and Mastercard get disrupted.

Makes sense.

But something happened this week that made me question whether we’ve got the second half of that equation wrong.

On September 22, SoFi announced it was moving its entire debit and credit card program onto stablecoin settlement using SoFiUSD.

Expected annualised volume?

More than US$25 billion.

But here’s the interesting part.

It isn’t bypassing Mastercard.

It’s settling through Mastercard’s global payments network.

That sent me down a rabbit hole.

And I think there might be a much bigger story developing underneath the stablecoin boom.

💳 THE DISRUPTORS ARE MEETING THE TOLL ROADS

Stablecoins solve some genuine problems.

They can move 24/7.

Settlement can be faster.

Cross-border movement can become easier.

Treasury operations can become more programmable.

So naturally, investors have focused on companies like $CRCL and fintechs like $SOFI.

But stablecoins still need to interact with the real economy.

Someone needs to connect:

banks → stablecoins → blockchains → wallets → merchants → fiat currencies

And the companies already sitting between billions of consumers, banks and merchants aren’t exactly standing still.

Visa now has more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs operating across its network.

Payment volume on those programs has grown nearly 200% YoY.

And Visa says its stablecoin settlement volume has surpassed a US$20B annualised run rate, more than 15x higher YoY.

That’s still tiny compared with Visa’s overall network.

But the direction matters.

Because Visa isn’t just allowing stablecoins onto the rails.

It’s beginning to build new businesses around them.

🧠 HERE’S THE PART I DIDN’T EXPECT

Every card program has a boring problem nobody talks about.

It has to fund settlement before it necessarily collects the money from cardholders.

That requires working capital.

Now imagine a new stablecoin card program settling seven days a week, including weekends and holidays.

Traditional financing wasn’t necessarily designed for that.

Visa’s answer?

Combine VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure so lenders can finance those settlement obligations.

One early model has already supported more than US$2.5B of cumulative financed settlement volume since 2023, according to Visa, with zero defaults across participating facilities to date.

Read that again.

The company supposedly threatened by blockchain isn’t simply processing blockchain-linked payments.

Its payment data is becoming part of the underwriting infrastructure financing them.

That’s a very different story.

🌉 MASTERCARD IS BUILDING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE

Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK in August.

BVNK connects traditional currencies with onchain payment infrastructure.

Mastercard’s own description of the future is revealing:

Fiat currencies, stablecoins and tokenised deposits may all coexist.

If that’s true, the winner doesn’t necessarily have to be one form of money.

There may be enormous value in connecting all of them.

Then came SoFi this week.

A US$25B+ annualised card program moving onto stablecoin settlement.

Through Mastercard.

That isn’t a PowerPoint experiment anymore.

Transactions are already live onchain.

🤯 SO WHAT IF WE’VE GOT THE DISRUPTION BACKWARDS?

The obvious thesis is:

Stablecoins → bypass payment networks → bad for Visa/Mastercard.

But an alternative path is emerging:

Stablecoins grow → financial rails fragment → interoperability becomes more important → trusted networks connect those rails → Visa/Mastercard expand from payment networks into settlement + data + liquidity infrastructure.

The technology disrupting them could actually increase the number of problems they’re able to solve.

The old toll road carried card payments.

The new toll road might connect:

cards

banks

stablecoins

tokenised deposits

blockchains

merchants

settlement

liquidity

credit

That’s a much larger surface area.

🔧 AND THERE’S ANOTHER QUIETER NAME HERE: $FIS

This is where Fidelity National Information Services ($FIS) gets interesting to me.

Earlier this year FIS launched Lyriq, infrastructure allowing regulated banks to issue and settle tokenised money while connecting back into existing core banking systems.

The important idea isn’t that every bank abandons its existing infrastructure and moves onto blockchain.

It’s almost the opposite.

New rails may have to coexist with old rails for years.

Someone has to orchestrate that mess.

Visa and Mastercard can bridge the merchant/payment side.

Companies like FIS could help bridge the banking infrastructure underneath it.

⚠️ NOW THE IMPORTANT COUNTERARGUMENT

None of this guarantees Visa or Mastercard wins.

Stablecoins could eventually remove enough intermediaries to compress network economics.

Banks could build their own rails.

Fintechs could increasingly settle directly.

Regulation could slow adoption.

And Visa’s US$20B annualised stablecoin settlement run rate is tiny compared with the enormous scale of its existing business.

So I’m not arguing:

“Stablecoins are bullish for Visa.”

That’s way too simple.

I’m watching something more interesting.

💡 WHAT IF STABLECOINS DON’T DESTROY THE TOLL ROAD?

WHAT IF THEY JUST CHANGE WHAT FLOWS THROUGH IT?

The market is watching the stablecoin issuers.

Crypto investors are watching $CRCL.

Fintech investors are watching $SOFI.

But maybe one of the more unexpected consequences of stablecoin adoption happens inside the supposedly boring financial plumbing.

$V. $MA. $FIS.

The companies stablecoins were expected to bypass are quietly building the bridges connecting stablecoins to the financial system we already use.

And if money really does become 24/7, multi-rail and programmable, owning the bridge between those systems could become extremely valuable.

Stablecoins may not bypass the toll road.

They might end up driving straight through it.

🐯🚀

$V $MA $SOFI $CRCL $FIS

Not financial advice. I’m following the infrastructure and asking where the second-order effects could land.

⸻

Receipts behind the thesis

Visa confirms the 160+ programs, ~200% YoY payment-volume growth, >US$20B annualised stablecoin settlement and >US$2.5B financed-settlement figures in its September material.

Visa: Onchain lending and stablecoin-linked cards⁠

SoFi confirms the US$25B+ annualised program is live using SoFiUSD across Mastercard’s network as of September 22.

SoFi: US$25B stablecoin settlement launch⁠

Mastercard confirms it completed the BVNK acquisition and explicitly describes the strategy as connecting fiat and digital currencies.

Mastercard: BVNK acquisition⁠

And FIS confirms Lyriq is production-ready infrastructure designed to connect tokenised deposits/digital currencies with existing bank cores and 24/7 settlement. 

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@TigerStars @TigerObserver