Visa, Mastercard and Global Payments join Circle's Arc stablecoin blockchain

On 5 August 2026 it was reported that Visa, Mastercard, Global Payments and MoneyGram had joined Arc, a blockchain project led by Circle Internet Group that is pitched as an enterprise-grade chain for stablecoin settlement, real-time payments and agent-initiated commerce. The card networks framed the move as staying multi-coin and multi-chain rather than backing a single stablecoin standard, with Visa pointing to Visa Direct as the cross-border rail that could carry stablecoin flows.

The networks are hedging in every direction at once: this lands weeks after 140-plus payments and banking firms launched the consortium-governed Open USD, and it puts Visa and Mastercard inside a competing, issuer-led chain as well. For European acceptance the consequence is not settlement today but positioning, since whichever chain wins enterprise settlement determines who sits between the acquirer and the merchant's bank account. Global Payments joining alongside the networks is the acquirer-side tell.

Whether any European acquirer settles real merchant volume on Arc, how it competes with Open USD, and whether MiCA e-money-token rules make a US-led chain usable for euro settlement at all.

• paymentsdive.com