Visa has moved its Visa Direct stablecoin payments initiative out of the pilot stage and into production, marking a broader shift from testing to live commercial use. The company said its first production partner is Inyo Global, a Massachusetts-based payments infrastructure provider.
Under the rollout, institutional users can prefund payouts around the clock with USDC and use Visa Direct for cross-border payment flows. Visa said the setup is designed to support real-time delivery of dollar-pegged assets in markets where local payment infrastructure remains less developed.
Pilot becomes commercial deployment
Visa announced Thursday that its stablecoin capabilities for Visa Direct are now available to institutional partners in a production environment. The move represents what the company described as a new phase in its digital asset strategy, shifting from experimentation toward operational payment use cases.
Inyo Global will act as the first production enabler for the service. According to Visa, the company will help other businesses connect to Visa Direct, use USDC to prefund payouts on a 24/7 basis, and handle liquidity more efficiently through Inyo’s existing payment rails.
How the offering is meant to work
Visa said Visa Direct supports fiat-to-stablecoin cross-border payments, allowing recipients to receive dollar-linked digital assets in real time. The company framed that as especially relevant in regions where traditional payment systems are slower or less reliable.
Because the assets are pegged to the dollar, Visa said the model can offer more predictable settlement values. It also allows transfers to continue outside standard banking hours, a feature that has been one of the central arguments for stablecoin-based payment infrastructure.
Inyo’s role in the network
The rollout is expected to support cross-border payments in more than 180 countries where Inyo Global operates. Visa said Inyo will serve money transmitters, fintechs, and payment companies already connected to its platform.
Inyo co-founder and chief product and technology officer Robson Dantas said the integration gives those institutional customers a way to test stablecoin-based payout funding without changing the APIs they already use. In practice, that means the stablecoin prefunding option is being added to existing payment workflows rather than launched as a separate system.
Visa’s broader stablecoin push
The production launch follows a period of growing activity by Visa in stablecoins. The company said stablecoin settlements on its network have reached a $20 billion annualized run rate, which it described as a 15-fold increase from the previous year.
Visa also pointed to a separate milestone from September, when it completed its first stablecoin settlement with Lloyds Banking Group. In that seven-day pilot, Visa received $750,000 in USDC from the bank during hours when traditional banking systems would normally be closed.
What comes next
For now, Inyo Global is the first confirmed production partner for Visa Direct’s stablecoin capabilities. Visa executive Vira Platonova, who leads Visa Direct globally, said the company has been working with several partners on stablecoin integration and is now beginning to see those efforts reach live implementation.
The immediate next step appears to be expanding real-world usage through institutional payout and money-movement platforms. Based on Visa’s announcement, the current launch is focused on enabling businesses to fund and move cross-border payments more flexibly, with Inyo serving as the initial live gateway.
Source: news.bitcoin.com