Background: Visa is the OG payments company, turning plastic rectangles into global purchases since 1958. It connects consumers, banks, businesses and governments so people can pay for things electronically. Today, Visa operates in more than 200 countries around the world and has the 16th largest market cap globally.

What happened: Now, Visa has launched a new pilot program called Visa Direct. It lets businesses send payments using US-dollar-backed stablecoins, which means gig workers and creators can be paid instantly in stablecoins instead of traditional methods.

What else: This move is all part of Visa’s push to modernise its payment network for the next generation of digital money. Visa's goal is to play a major role as stablecoin payments evolve and scale.

What's the key learning?

💡Stablecoins are a digital currency designed to hold a steady value because they’re pegged to a real currency like the US dollar.

💡While Bitcoin and Ethereum often dominate headlines, they are extremely volatile, which makes stablecoins far more practical for everyday transactions and for storing value in countries with shaky currencies or weak banking systems.

💡Visa stepping into stablecoin payments is a big deal because few companies actually move money at Visa’s scale. Visa processes about 400 million transactions per day, so if any player can push stablecoins into the mainstream, it's definitely Visa.