Visa, USDC, and Stablecoin Settlement: Ethereum's Mainstream Payments Narrative (2021-2025)

If you’re looking for a mainstream signal that Ethereum isn’t just for crypto traders, watch what payment giants do. Few names carry more weight in global commerce than Visa. Over several years, Visa has repeatedly tested and expanded stablecoin settlement–including milestone experiments that used USDC on Ethereum.

This is a different kind of adoption than ETFs. ETFs are “exposure.” Stablecoin settlement is “utility.” It’s about using blockchain rails to move real value with near-real-time settlement and 24/7 availability.

1) The 2021 milestone: USDC settlement on Ethereum

In 2021, Visa announced it had settled a transaction with Visa using USD Coin (USDC) over the Ethereum blockchain, piloting the capability with Crypto.com. This announcement mattered for two reasons:

it showed a major payments network was willing to touch public blockchain rails,
it validated stablecoins as settlement instruments rather than speculative tokens.

For Ethereum, it reinforced the “global settlement layer” thesis: a public chain can be used for real financial operations.

2) Why stablecoins are the bridge between TradFi and DeFi

Stablecoins are the closest thing crypto has to “cash-like” instruments. They offer:

dollar-denominated accounting units,
fast settlement across borders,
programmability (smart contract integration),
integration with DeFi liquidity and collateral systems.

In TradFi terms, stablecoins can function like digital cash, but with API-native features. This is why stablecoin adoption often grows even during bear markets: businesses and exchanges still need a stable unit for settlement and treasury.

3) Ethereum’s role: neutrality, liquidity, and composability

Ethereum has historically been a major home for stablecoins because of its ecosystem depth:

DeFi markets create demand for stablecoin collateral and liquidity.
Wallet and exchange support is broad.
Composability lets stablecoins plug into lending, DEXs, and payments.

Even as stablecoins expand to multiple chains, Ethereum’s base layer remains a reference point for liquidity and settlement credibility. For mainstream institutions, that credibility is part brand and part engineering: Ethereum’s security and decentralization are treated as features when the settlement stakes are high.

4) Fees and user experience: the push toward L2s and alternative rails

One reason stablecoin settlement narratives expand beyond Ethereum L1 is fees. Ethereum L1 fees can spike when demand surges. Institutions that care about predictable costs may prefer:

L2 rollups that still settle to Ethereum,
or other high-throughput chains with low base fees.

Visa itself has expanded stablecoin settlement work beyond a single chain. In 2023, Visa announced it was expanding stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain while working with merchant acquirers. In late 2025, Visa announced an expansion of stablecoin settlement in the United States, citing substantial annualized stablecoin settlement volume.

The key takeaway is not “Ethereum lost.” The takeaway is that mainstream payment flows are exploring multi-rail architectures, and Ethereum competes as both L1 settlement and L2 foundation.

5) Ethereum vs Solana in payments framing

Payments use cases highlight the classic tradeoff:

Ethereum emphasizes decentralization, security, and a rich DeFi ecosystem, with scaling increasingly handled via rollups.
Solana emphasizes low base transaction fees and high throughput on a single, highly optimized L1.

Solana documentation describes a base fee per signature, producing very low nominal fees in normal conditions. Ethereum’s fee market is more variable because it prices scarce blockspace and computation via gas and EIP-1559’s base fee mechanism.

In mainstream adoption terms, the competition becomes: do you want predictable cheap L1 fees, or do you want a layered model where a secure base layer supports many scaling layers?

6) Institutional adoption: settlement and treasury operations are the real unlock

The most valuable stablecoin adoption isn’t retail transfers–it’s integrating stablecoins into core settlement operations:

issuer and acquirer settlement,
treasury management for payment flows,
cross-border merchant payouts,
24/7 liquidity and operational resilience on weekends and holidays.

That’s why Visa’s announcements are so important: they’re aimed at the “boring” parts of finance that move huge volumes.

7) What this means for Ethereum’s mainstream narrative

Ethereum’s role in stablecoin settlement reinforces several long-tail SEO truths:

Ethereum stablecoin settlement is a distinct story from “ETH price.”
USDC on Ethereum is part of real-world payment modernization.
Public blockchain settlement can coexist with compliance and reporting.

For Virtual Ethereum Index style analysis, Visa’s stablecoin initiatives are adoption signals that sit outside the usual crypto metrics. They connect Ethereum to merchant acquirers, banks, and payment processors–institutions that don’t move fast unless there is real operational value.

8) The bridge to RWA and tokenization

Stablecoin settlement is also the stepping stone to tokenization of real world assets (RWA). Once you can move stablecoins reliably, you can settle tokenized Treasuries, tokenized money market funds, and other on-chain assets more efficiently.

The next article dives into how stablecoins–especially USDC–scaled on Ethereum and became the “programmable dollars” layer powering both DeFi and TradFi experimentation.

References (selected)

Visa press release (Mar 2021): Visa announced settling a transaction in USDC over Ethereum and piloting with Crypto.com.
Visa press release (Sep 5, 2023): Visa expanded stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana with Worldpay and Nuvei.
Visa press release (Dec 16, 2025): Visa launched/expanded USDC settlement in the United States, citing $3.5B annualized stablecoin settlement volume.
Solana docs: base transaction fee is 5000 lamports per signature and the fee split includes a burn and validator distribution.
Ethereum.org gas docs: EIP-1559 base fee adjusts up/down by up to 12.5% per block depending on demand.

VEI.XYZ™ – Virtual Ethereum Index

Practical SEO takeaways for readers and researchers

If you are researching mainstream Ethereum adoption through a TradFi lens, it helps to separate four layers that often get mixed together in headlines: regulated exposure (spot Ethereum ETFs, futures, ETPs), settlement rails (stablecoin payments, treasury settlement, on-chain cash management), tokenization (real world assets, tokenized Treasuries, tokenized money market funds), and execution ecosystems (Ethereum L1 + rollups). Each layer has different adoption curves, different risk profiles, and different “user counts” that matter.

For example, ETF investors are often “users” of Ethereum price exposure without ever touching a wallet. Stablecoin users may not care about ETH price but use USDC or USDT as programmable dollars. And RWA participants care about compliance, reporting, and redemption mechanics as much as they care about block times. When you combine these cohorts, Ethereum’s mainstream footprint becomes larger than any single metric like L1 transactions.

Long-tail keywords readers often search include: spot ether ETF fees, Ethereum ETF brokerage availability, institutional ETH allocation, tokenized treasury fund on Ethereum, Visa stablecoin settlement USDC, real world asset tokenization on public blockchain, Ethereum vs Solana fees, and Ethereum vs Bitcoin portfolio role. These queries map well to the four-layer framework above.

Glossary: Stablecoin
Glossary: USD Coin (USDC)
Directory: Circle
Blog: Scaling the Vision: Metropolis, ERC-20, and the 2017 Token Boom