Monad Says Visa Added It to Stablecoin Settlement as Run Rate Hits $25 Billion

On November 10, 2026, the Monad Foundation announced that Visa▲+0.94% — Visa, up 0.94 percent today, the world's largest card network, had added Monad, a fast Layer 1 blockchain, to the networks banks and payment firms can use to settle their obligations to Visa in stablecoins ¹. Visa itself published no announcement; the release quotes Dan Roesbery, Visa's vice president of global onchain partnerships, calling the addition "another step toward building a multi-chain settlement infrastructure." ¹ The Monad Foundation, not Visa, published the announcement.

Tenfold in a year, from a small base

The release carries Visa's own figures: an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate of $25 billion as of September 2026, roughly ten times the year-earlier level, across more than 225 stablecoin-linked card programs, up from 130 in April. ¹ Visa CEO Ryan McInerney gave the same numbers on the company's October 27 earnings call↗, where he also counted ten settlement blockchains and five stablecoins: USDC, USDG, EURC, PYUSD and SBC. ¹² He did not name Monad among the ten, and neither company has said whether Monad is included in that count. ¹

Scale matters here. Visa told investors in April↗ that its network had settled almost $13 trillion between financial institution partners in the preceding year, overwhelmingly in fiat currency. ² The $25 billion stablecoin run rate is roughly 0.2% of that ². At that scale, the growth signals intent to compete rather than an established business.

Mastercard moved first

On June 3, 2026 Mastercard▲+0.33% — Mastercard, up 0.33 percent today said it would add settlement windows beyond the business week↗: weekends, holidays and intraday, for both fiat transactions and cards linked to regulated stablecoins such as USDC. ⁵ Mastercard ran more than 120 crypto-linked card programs at the time and had agreed in March to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for $1.8 billion. ⁵ Payments consultant Aaron McPherson flagged the strategic logic: the move "does have the side effect of taking the momentum away from direct stablecoin transactions," because the networks "do not want to see a rival set of rails compete with cards." ⁵

The bear case has no number

That is the crux for a Visa holder. The bull case reads the $25 billion as settlement volume Visa captures and prices on its own terms, volume that would otherwise clear outside the network ¹³.

The bear case reads it as the first tranche of a rail that commoditizes settlement itself, where the chain, not the card network, owns the faster, cheaper leg. So far the only disclosed number favors the bull case; what Visa earns per dollar remains unknown, because Visa does not disclose per-settlement economics, and the Monad release names no issuers or acquirers and no volumes on Monad specifically. ¹³

What to watch

Monad's pitch for institutions is privacy, and it is not live. The foundation says its Private Settlement feature↗, built to keep payment details hidden from the public while auditors and regulators can still see them, will reach Visa's partners "in the coming months." ¹

Three dated checkpoints tell the story's direction: whether Visa's next disclosure names Monad in the settlement count, which stablecoins actually settle on it, and the December-quarter earnings call, where the run rate either keeps compounding from $25 billion or the growth curve flattens as the base gets bigger ¹². Until then, the run rate is the only hard number either side of the argument has. ¹²