Visa adds Monad as a stablecoin settlement option

Visa has added the Monad blockchain as a stablecoin settlement option for participating issuers and acquirers, giving them another network for settling payment obligations. The Monad Foundation’s November 10 announcement says the option is available now.

Here is the route: a participating issuer or acquirer chooses a supported blockchain network to settle an obligation with Visa in stablecoins. On Monad, the transaction is submitted to the network, where validators check and record it. Monad says its network reaches finality in 800 milliseconds, the point at which a transaction is treated as settled and cannot be reversed. The Foundation says issuers and acquirers already using Ethereum-based custody, wallet and compliance tools can typically extend those integrations to Monad because it is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

What changes when an institution settles on Monad?

The institution gets another blockchain route for settlement. The Foundation says blockchain settlement can let funds move on weekends and holidays, while card settlement over traditional banking rails has typically followed a five-business-day schedule. That is the difference between a network that can keep processing around the clock and one whose timetable follows business days. For merchants and cardholders, the Foundation says, the Visa experience remains familiar; settlement happens behind the scenes.

Visa’s Dan Roesbery, vice president of global onchain partnerships and go-to-market, said in the release that Monad expands the options available to Visa’s partners. The announcement does not name participating issuers or acquirers. Nor does it specify which stablecoins they can use on Monad, a gap also noted by Unchained’s report on the addition. The news is about a network option, not a named bank or stablecoin launch.

When will Monad’s privacy feature be available?

Not yet. The Monad Foundation says its Private Settlement feature is planned for the coming months. It is designed to keep commercially sensitive transaction details confidential while allowing institutions to share them with auditors and regulators. The feature is being built into the network, the Foundation says, so private transactions can remain connected to the network’s liquidity.

That privacy feature is a separate next step from the settlement option announced on November 10. The release says participating Visa institutions can now choose Monad, but does not say they must use it. It also does not say that the planned privacy functionality is already live. For now, the concrete change is an additional route: eligible Visa partners can settle obligations in stablecoins over Monad, alongside the other networks Visa supports.

Source material

• Monad Foundation’s November 10 announcement — globenewswire.com
• Unchained’s report on the addition — unchainedcrypto.com