Visa is looking at settlement and over-the-counter partners holding crypto exchange licenses in four countries, CoinDesk reports, weeks after Mastercard closed its purchase of the firm Visa had been working with.
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Posted August 18, 2026 at 4:06 pm EST.
Visa is taking bids for a new stablecoin settlement partner after Mastercard bought the firm that had been filling the role, according to CoinDesk.
Visa is looking at one settlement partner and one over-the-counter partner in particular, both holding crypto exchange licenses in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Singapore, CoinDesk reported Tuesday, citing documents it reviewed. The request asks for the ability to swap and support a range of stablecoins, as well as settlement for Open USD, the token Visa named as the first asset supported on its Visa Stablecoin Platform introduced on July 16.
Visa built the platform as an enterprise product, with wallet infrastructure, minting and burning, dual-control approvals and audit logging for banks and fintechs that want to issue or move stablecoins without assembling the stack themselves.
A Rival Bought the Plumbing
Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK on Aug. 3. Visa’s own history with the London company runs back to May 2025, when Visa Ventures invested in it. BVNK said at the time that it was processing $12 billion in annualized stablecoin payment volume.
Open USD complicates the rivalry, because Visa, Mastercard and Stripe all back the same consortium behind the token. The two card networks are competing on infrastructure while sharing the currency that runs over it.
A Short List of Candidates
Licenses across four jurisdictions narrow the pool, and Visa has not said who is in the running. It declined to comment to CoinDesk.
“Stablecoins are opening up a new layer of programmable money, but for most institutions the hard part isn’t the concept, it’s the operational reality,” Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, said in the release announcing Visa’s stablecoin platform.
That operational reality is now Visa’s own problem. The platform opened in beta with a small set of clients, so the gap is not yet holding back live volume, and whoever wins the mandate inherits Visa’s institutional flow for Open USD.
Related Listen: Stripe Bid $53B for PayPal: Who Actually Wins Stablecoin Payments?
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