Stablecoin payments reach $482B through September as Mastercard, Visa, Stripe add services
Payment volume rose 45% year on year while supply barely moved. Card networks rolled out new stablecoin products in mid-October.
FINTECHSTABLECOINS & CBDC
Hana Kimura
10/18/20261 min read
Stablecoin payments totaled $482 billion through September 30, up 45% from a year earlier, TokenPost reported on October 18. Payment transaction counts rose 71% over the nine months while the average payment size declined. Supply, by contrast, stood at $305 billion at the end of September, only 0.4% above its level at the start of 2026. The data show more payment activity on a nearly flat supply base.
Card networks followed with new products. Mastercard and BVNK launched the Global Money Platform on October 15, letting banks, fintechs and businesses hold fiat and stablecoin balances, convert between them, issue stablecoin-linked cards and pay out to local bank accounts. Nuvei, Marqeta, Ontop, Bolt Group and Almond FinTech are the first integrators. On October 19 Mastercard added Stablecoin Security, which assigns a risk score to transfers before they settle onchain.
Visa moved stablecoin prefunding for Visa Direct from pilot to commercial deployment, with Inyo Global as the first enabler, so eligible businesses can use USDC to prefund cross-border payouts. Stripe named Plasma as design partner for planned multi-currency cards that would support dollars, euros, several Latin American currencies and eligible stablecoins; no launch date was given. The new services came after the September 30 cutoff and do not explain the growth measured to that date.
Source: TokenPost, Startup Fortune.