San Francisco, California — Anchorage Digital has agreed with Visa to let selected stablecoins minted by its federally chartered bank act as native settlement assets on the card network, beginning with USDPT, the dollar-backed token it issues for Western Union.
Under the arrangement Visa and eligible partners now have the option of paying what they owe on VisaNet in USDPT. It is the first token from Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. to be accepted, and the two companies have set up a framework to look at supporting further stablecoins once the initial launch is complete.
Settlement in this context is a wholesale process. Visa has defined it as the daily exchange of funds between its issuing and acquiring partners over VisaNet for cleared transactions, rather than any movement of money out of individual cardholders' accounts.
Anchorage presents the Visa deal as one step in a larger plan: to become the settlement bank for stablecoins at institutional scale. The company said that ambition goes beyond minting tokens and includes running the custody and settlement infrastructure the wider market relies on.
Nathan McCauley, Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, said: “Stablecoins have made money move faster, but speed alone won't bring institutions onchain. They need a regulated institution behind the money. With Anchorage Digital select issued stablecoins now being supported on the Visa network, institutions get both: the speed of a stablecoin and the safety of a federally regulated bank behind it.”
Dan Roesbery, Vice President, Global Crypto Partnerships & GTM at Visa, added: “As stablecoin payments grow, we’re focused on providing more choice for our partners in how they settle with Visa. Supporting USDPT as a native settlement asset, in partnership with Anchorage, gives them another trusted, institution-grade option backed by a federally chartered bank.”
USDPT is one of several tokens produced on Anchorage Digital Bank's federally regulated issuance platform. The bank also mints USAT for Tether, USDGO for OSL Group, USDtb for Ethena Labs, fUSD for Falcon Finance and ZLUSD for Zelle. Anchorage says each token is backed in full by U.S. dollars and cash equivalents, can be redeemed 1:1 and is minted under federal supervision.
Issuing tokens is only part of the business. Anchorage also operates Atlas, a counterparty settlement network that it says lets institutions settle these assets while reducing counterparty risk, and which already handles off-exchange settlement, collateral management and cross-border transfers.
The company called the Visa integration an important milestone and an early sign of its direction. In its view, the deal points to a bank model designed around digital assets, where one federally chartered institution mints stablecoins, supports a widening set of third-party tokens and runs the settlement rails between them. Its pitch is aimed at institutions building faster, always-on payments.
Western Union launched USDPT on the Solana blockchain on May 4. It planned to use the token in three areas: internal treasury settlement, a Digital Asset Network supplying liquidity rails to partners and counterparties, and Stable by Western Union, a consumer spending product it said would launch in June 2026 in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and the Philippines.
The money transfer company also chose Fireblocks to support the infrastructure behind USDPT, its first stablecoin. At launch, Anchorage argued that conventional cross-border systems depend heavily on pre-funding, forcing firms to park idle balances in destination markets so payments can clear across time zones and banking systems.
Anchorage and Visa have history on stablecoin settlement. When Visa first settled a transaction in USDC over Ethereum in March 2021, it named Anchorage as an exclusive digital currency settlement partner, and the pilot let Crypto.com send USDC to Visa to cover part of its card program obligations. Visa is also an Anchorage investor, alongside Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs and KKR.
Visa's own program has grown quickly since then. In December 2025 it opened USDC settlement to U.S. issuers and acquirers, with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank the first to settle over Solana, and said its stablecoin settlement volume had passed a $3.5 billion annualized run rate as of November 30.
By September 2026, Visa said that run rate had topped $20 billion, more than 15 times the level of a year earlier, and that over 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were operating on its network.
Visa's U.S. settlement launch in December 2025 was built around Circle's USDC. Adding a token issued by a federally chartered bank could give partners more choice over which dollar stablecoin they settle in, the point Roesbery made, and institutions already holding USDPT may be able to settle with Visa without first switching into another asset.
Anchorage Digital was founded in 2017 in San Francisco and has offices in New York, Porto, Singapore and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In February, Tether made a $100 million strategic equity investment that valued the company at $4.2 billion, after choosing Anchorage Digital Bank to issue its U.S. stablecoin, USAT.
