WhiteSight

Inside Visa and Mastercard’s Onchain Finance Push

April 10, 2026

Inside Visa and Mastercard’s Onchain Finance Push

Onchain finance is moving into the core of the financial system.

Across 2025 and Q1 2026, Visa and Mastercard moved further into this space by becoming the integration layer. Visa extended  its model across public blockchains, enabling stablecoin settlement, card issuance, wallet integrations, and cross-border flows through partners and APIs. Mastercard built its MTN network, where institutions join a permissioned environment to issue, transfer, and settle tokenized assets.

The scale reflects this shift. Visa’s stablecoin settlement platform reached $3.5B in annualized volume across four blockchains and four stablecoins, and supports 130+ stablecoin card programs across 40+ countries. Mastercard acquired BVNK for $1.8B to bring stablecoin infrastructure into its network, while MTN expanded into EEMEA with participants including JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, and SoFi.

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Description

This roundup explores the questions that matter most as Visa and Mastercard push deeper into onchain finance:

  • What role are Visa and Mastercard each playing as stablecoins and digital assets go mainstream?
  • Will traditional payment networks remain essential infrastructure, or could onchain systems eventually route around them?
  • Why are both companies investing heavily in crypto wallets, digital accounts, and programmable money?
  • Where in the payments chain does the real economic value lie, and are Visa and Mastercard positioned to hold it?
  • How are regulatory environments shaping the way each company builds its onchain strategy?
  • What different bets Visa and Mastercard are making in the onchain payments ecosystem?

The result is one of the most important strategic shifts in modern payments.

In WhiteSight’s latest roundup, we mapped how both networks are approaching the rise of stablecoins, programmable settlement, self-custody wallets, merchant acceptance, digital identity, and the next control layer beneath everyday payments.

This report is designed for fintech and onchain finance operators – founders, payment strategists, issuers, acquirers, wallet providers, investors, and infrastructure builders – seeking a clearer view of where power, margin, and distribution are moving.

Because beneath the familiar logos, something much bigger is underway: the card is evolving into an interface for a far broader financial stack.

Get the strategic context behind how two global payment giants are preparing for the next era of financial infrastructure.

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