Visa lets partners settle in Western Union’s USDPT, issued by Anchorage, but names no partner or volume

Visa will accept USDPT, the dollar stablecoin Western Union launched on 4 May, as a way for its partners to pay what they owe on VisaNet, Anchorage Digital said on Thursday 12 November. In a press release, the crypto bank, which issues USDPT under its national bank charter, said Visa and “eligible partners” can now use the token to settle VisaNet obligations. It is the first of the stablecoins Anchorage issues for other brands to be supported in Visa stablecoin settlement.

The announcement is short on the numbers that would show its size. Neither Anchorage nor Visa named a partner that settles in USDPT. There is no start date, no volume, no fee and no figure for the token’s supply. Western Union, whose coin it is, did not comment in the release. The rest of the deal is a promise: the two companies say they have built a framework to look at other Anchorage-issued stablecoins later, without naming one.

For Visa, it is one more option on a settlement menu built mostly around Circle’s USDC. Anchorage presents it as part of its plan to become “the settlement bank for stablecoins at institutional scale”. Visa’s earlier stablecoin moves this autumn, USDC prefunding for Visa Direct payouts with Inyo Global and the plan with Mesh to let people spend straight from crypto wallets, sit on other parts of its business; Thursday’s deal is about settlement only.

What is live, and what is only a framework

Read closely, the release describes two different things. The first is live: USDPT is now a native settlement asset on the Visa network, and Visa and eligible partners can use it to meet their VisaNet obligations. In card terms, those obligations are the net amounts that issuers and acquirers owe Visa after transactions clear. Paid in a token rather than by bank wire, that money can move on a Sunday or at night, when wire systems are closed.

The second part is exploratory. The deal “creates a framework” to support more stablecoins issued by Anchorage after the first launch, according to the release. Anchorage lists the coins it issues: USAT for Tether, USDPT for Western Union, USDGO for OSL Group, USDtb for Ethena Labs, fUSD for Falcon Finance and ZLUSD for Zelle. None of them except USDPT is confirmed for Visa settlement, and the release gives no order or timetable.

What “eligible partners” means is not defined. The release does not say whether that covers any Visa issuer or acquirer, only those already in Visa’s stablecoin settlement programme, or only firms with an Anchorage account. It also does not say whether Visa itself will hold USDPT on its balance sheet or convert it at once.

Anchorage chief executive Nathan McCauley said speed alone will not bring institutions on-chain: “They need a regulated institution behind the money.” Dan Roesbery, Visa’s vice president for global crypto partnerships and go-to-market, framed it as choice: “As stablecoin payments grow, we’re focused on providing more choice for our partners in how they settle with Visa.”

USDPT: Western Union’s coin, Anchorage’s balance sheet

Western Union first announced USDPT with the Solana Foundation on 28 October 2025 and launched it on 4 May 2026. The token runs on Solana and is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., a federally chartered bank. In Thursday’s release, Anchorage says the stablecoins it issues are fully backed by US dollars and cash equivalents, redeemable one for one and minted under federal oversight. Its May post on the launch gave no reserve breakdown and did not name an auditor or an attestation schedule.

Western Union’s own launch release of 4 May listed four uses: round-the-clock settlement between Western Union and its agents, a “Digital Asset Network” linking licensed exchanges and custodians to its payout system, listings on licensed exchanges, and a consumer product called Stable by Western Union, due in more than 40 countries during 2026. Fireblocks provides the wallet and settlement infrastructure, with two firms it recently bought: Dynamic for agents’ wallets and TRES for turning on-chain records into bank statement formats.

Philippines and Bolivia, or four other markets?

Reports on where USDPT is live do not agree, because they describe different layers. The Block wrote on Thursday that Western Union first launched USDPT in the Philippines and Bolivia. That matches the primary source: the Fireblocks release of 4 May says USDPT operations “will roll out initially across two markets, the Philippines and Bolivia”, before spreading across Western Union’s network.

The other version comes from Anchorage’s May blog post, which said the consumer layer, Stable by Western Union, would launch in June 2026 in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and the Philippines. That is a spending app, not the agent settlement token’s first markets. Western Union’s releases do not say whether Stable went live in June, or in how many of those four countries. Neither version says anything about which countries’ Visa partners can settle in USDPT; Thursday’s release names no market at all.

Visa stablecoin settlement so far: from a 2021 pilot to a $20 billion run rate

Anchorage is not new to Visa. On 29 March 2021 Visa said it had settled a transaction in USDC on Ethereum, in a pilot with Crypto.com in which Anchorage acted as settlement agent. Visa is also listed among Anchorage’s investors in Thursday’s release, next to Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The programme stayed small for four years, then grew fast.

On 16 December 2025, Visa opened USDC settlement to US issuers and acquirers, starting on Solana with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, and said it would use Arc, Circle’s own blockchain, then in public testnet, and run a validator on it. Its monthly stablecoin settlement volume had passed a $3.5 billion annualized run rate as of 30 November 2025.

On 29 April 2026, Visa said the run rate had reached $7 billion, up 50% in a quarter, with more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programmes in over 50 countries, and it added five blockchains (Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon and Tempo) to the four it already used (Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar). The Block also lists Monad among the networks Visa has added; Visa’s April release did not name it.

The latest figure is from 8 September 2026, when Visa’s release on on-chain lending with Credit Coop put stablecoin settlement above a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the year before. The same release counted more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programmes on Visa’s network, with payment volume on them up nearly 200% year on year.

A run rate is not a total. It takes a recent period, usually a month, and multiplies it to a year, so the $20 billion figure says how fast settlement was going in late summer, not how much Visa has settled in 2026.

Why a bank-issued coin matters to Visa’s partners

Most of Visa’s stablecoin settlement so far has run on USDC, issued by Circle, a payments company. USDPT is different in who stands behind it: a federally chartered bank issues it, for a money transfer company that operates in more than 200 countries and territories. Roesbery’s own words point the same way, describing USDPT as an “institution-grade option backed by a federally chartered bank”.

For a Western Union agent or a payments firm already holding USDPT, the deal could mean one fewer conversion. Money received in USDPT could, in principle, go straight to settling a Visa bill without first being swapped into USDC or wired as dollars. Whether any firm does that today is not known: the release gives no example.

For Anchorage, Visa acceptance is something to show the next brand that asks it to issue a coin. Its client list already runs from Tether’s US coin to Zelle’s ZLUSD, and the release presents settlement on card rails as part of the service. Anchorage also runs Atlas, a network for off-exchange settlement, collateral and cross-border transfers between counterparties; the release does not say whether Atlas plays a part in the Visa flows. Its earlier partnership with Chainlink, which we covered in our report on CustodySync going live with Anchorage, also named no client.

Visa keeps adding coins and chains while a question about its own plans stays open: in October Axios reported that Visa was in talks to buy Fireblocks, the firm behind USDPT’s wallets, which Fireblocks disputed, as we reported in our piece on the denied Visa takeover talks. Nothing in Thursday’s release mentions Fireblocks.

What this does not change for cardholders

Nobody pays in USDPT at a shop because of this deal. Settlement happens behind the card: the cardholder still pays in their own currency, the merchant is still paid as before, and only the transfer between Visa and its bank or fintech partners can now be made in the token. Western Union customers do not gain a Visa feature either; any change for them depends on Western Union’s own products.

USDPT is a dollar token issued by a US bank. Thursday’s news does not touch euro stablecoins, and nothing in it concerns USDPT’s status in the European Union under MiCA. Readers new to the subject can start with our beginner’s guide to stablecoins.

Open questions and what to watch

• Which partners settle in USDPT today, and from what date, has not been disclosed by Visa, Anchorage or Western Union.
• No volume, fee or USDPT supply figure was given, so the share of Visa’s settlement that runs in USDPT cannot be measured.
• The next Anchorage coin to be accepted, if any, is not named; Tether’s USAT and Zelle’s ZLUSD are on Anchorage’s list but have no Visa date.
• Neither Anchorage nor Western Union has named an auditor or an attestation schedule for USDPT, and the reserve mix beyond dollars and cash equivalents is not published.
• Visa’s next run-rate update would show whether added coins move the total; its last one came with the 8 September release.

Western Union, which owns the brand, said nothing in Thursday’s release. Its next statement, or Visa’s next run-rate figure, is where the first USDPT volume is likely to appear.