Visa Pivots From Layoffs To Stablecoin Infrastructure Amid $11.6B Q3 Revenue Surge

Woofun AI reports that Visa’s strategic thesis has shifted from direct competition to channel dominance, evidenced by its entry into the Open Standard alliance and support for the new stablecoin OpenUSD, all while strictly maintaining a multi-currency, multi-chain strategy.

The financial foundation for this pivot was laid in the third quarter of 2026, where net revenue reached $11.6 billion, marking a 14% year-on-year increase. Payment volumes for the quarter broke through $4 trillion for the first time in the company’s history, a milestone. This surge in transactional throughput provides the liquidity base necessary for Visa to expand its infrastructure footprint without relying on speculative issuance models.

On July 28, 2026, Visa released its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, reporting earnings per share at $3.32. CEO Ryan McInerney stated that both figures exceeded the company’s expectations. At a fixed exchange rate, payment volumes increased by 10% year-on-year, and the number of transactions processed rose by 10% to 72 billion. Cross-border transaction volumes, payment transaction volumes, and overall transaction processing all saw double-digit growth, with cross-border transactions consistently being the segment with Visa’s highest gross margin.

The operational restructuring accompanying these gains involved significant cost cutting and resource reallocation. Visa allocated $563 million in GAAP severance costs for the quarter, primarily targeting technology and product teams. Simultaneously, the company bought back $4.9 billion in shares while distributing $1.3 billion in dividends during the same period. The freed-up resources were explicitly directed toward three areas: AI, stablecoins, and merchant services, signaling a deliberate trade of headcount for investment capacity in digital asset infrastructure.

Visa is positioning itself as the foundation for stablecoins through an end-to-end approach, investing in every layer from blockchain and issuance to wallets and the application layer. Progress this quarter focused on issuance and applications, with the issuance side anchored by joining the Open Standard alliance to support OpenUSD. On the application side, Visa’s Stablecoin Platform (VSP) was released in mid-July, aiming to enable financial institutions, fintech companies, and crypto-native firms to gain stablecoin capabilities through a Visa-managed environment, including access, custody, and redemption, initially supporting OUSD.

A less discussed but structurally critical component is the integration with Pismo to offer tokenized deposit services to financial institutions. Visa plans to bring in third-party tokenized deposit infrastructure providers in the future. Tokenized deposits and stablecoins are technically similar but differ in financial structure: one is an on-chain representation of bank liabilities, while the other is a currency substitute issued by non-bank institutions. By covering both sides, Visa leaves room in both the banking system and the crypto ecosystem, having already made its bet on which side will prevail.

The competitive landscape remains highly concentrated, with Circle and Tether dominating the market. As of the end of July 2026, the total market cap of stablecoins was approximately $303.2 billion, with USDT accounting for $184.2 billion and USDC accounting for $73.4 billion. The overall market cap even declined slightly by 3.3% over the past 90 days. In a market where the total volume remains stagnant and two issuers control the vast majority of circulating supply, it is extremely costly for new entrants to compete for market share on their own, especially given the limited adoption beyond use cases like the U-card.

Woofun AI data shows that the Open Standard alliance comprises 140 founding partners, including Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, Standard Chartered, Google, Shopify, Coinbase, and Ripple. ARK analyst Lorenzo Valente wrote on X on July 29 that the commitments from OUSD partners increasingly resemble a soft letter of intent rather than a strategic bet. His point is that supporting OUSD is completely different from actually investing distribution channels, balance sheets, and resources to ensure its success, suggesting that Visa’s involvement is more about securing a seat at the table than driving immediate adoption.

Controversies surrounding the alliance highlight key absences and denials. Zach Abrams, CEO of Bridge under Stripe, serves as the founding CEO of Open Standard, with the token expected to launch later in 2026 on the SOL network.

However, Samsung said it had not engaged in formal discussions with Open Standard and was unsure of its role in the alliance; Dunamu, Shinhan Bank, and K Bank said they had received inquiries but hadn’t approved participation, with some companies only learning of their inclusion through media reports. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, criticized the alliance-based stablecoin model for being structurally prone to failure, while Circle, Tether, and PayPal, the three largest issuers of USD stablecoins, are not among the partners.

This marks a strategic conclusion where Visa views its participation as an option, not a bet, leveraging its merchant network and relationships with card-issuing banks to ensure that the winner ultimately has to sell through my platform. By avoiding direct issuance competition, Visa controls the channels themselves, rendering the specific winner of the stablecoin war irrelevant to its long-term revenue model.