Visa’s Stablecoin Settlements Grew 15 Times in a Year. Is the Stock Still a Buy Near $370?

Visa's stablecoin settlement volume surged 15x, but CEO Ryan McInerney frames it as optionality against $4 trillion in quarterly payment volume.

Mastercard is building identical multi-chain settlement infrastructure, while PayPal bets on PYUSD to capture value in the coin rather than the rail.

Client incentives growing 18% year-over-year risk eroding Visa's take rate faster than stablecoin revenue offsets it, threatening the stock's 25x forward multiple.

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Payment companies rarely get to brag about a fifteenfold jump in anything, so Visa (NYSE:V) putting up that kind of number on stablecoin settlement volume caught attention.

The stock trades near $370.05, close to its 52-week high of $385.57, and bulls are pointing to on-chain rails as the next leg.

The number describes an annualized settlement pace on a new rail, not completed annual settlement, revenue, or profit. Visa disclosed no fee schedule. Stablecoin-linked card programs grew payment volume nearly 200% year over year, but the question is whether this deepens the network moat or pressures current economics.

Quarterly payments volume crossed $4 trillion for the first time in Visa's history, growing 10% year-over-year in constant dollars. Against that, a 15-times jump on a small base is optionality, not a material contributor.

CEO Ryan McInerney acknowledged the scale constraint: stablecoins "have yet to scale beyond a few use cases like stable coin link cards that we've issued in various places around the world."

He also framed the strategic posture cleanly: "Our role is not to pick winners. Our role is to help clients connect to the stablecoin ecosystem securely and at scale, regardless of which stablecoin, which network, which infrastructure ultimately gain adoption."

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Mastercard (NYSE:MA) is building the same multi-chain settlement plumbing, so any long-run margin compression from tokenized deposits hits both networks together, not Visa alone.

PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) sits on the other side of the trade with PYUSD, an issuer trying to capture value in the coin itself rather than the settlement rail.

Visa's advantage remains distribution: 71.7 billion processed transactions in the quarter and clients in over 200 countries and territories, which is what OpenUSD and the new Visa stablecoin platform plug into.

Q3 FY2026 net revenue rose 14.4% to $11.63 billion, with non-GAAP EPS of $3.32 beating the $3.2307 estimate.

The stock carries a trailing PE of 32x and a forward PE of 25x, with an analyst target of $419.36. Client incentives grew 18% year over year, offsetting some pricing tailwind in data processing.

Buyback capacity of $28.4 billion keeps EPS support intact while the stablecoin option develops.

The bull case: consumer spending is resilient, and U.S. payment volume growth is running at a pace "not seen since fiscal 2019, excluding the post-COVID recovery," while Visa monetizes new rails without underwriting them.

The bear case: stablecoins eventually route commerce around interchange for high-margin use cases, and a 25 forward multiple leaves no cushion if payment volume growth slips below double digits.

V trades near $370. The key variable is client incentives: if that 18% growth keeps accelerating while data processing pricing decelerates, the network's take rate is being negotiated away faster than stablecoin optionality can offset it.

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