Visa said on Sept. 8 that more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were operating globally during its fiscal second quarter of 2026, while their payment volume increased nearly 200% year over year.

The payments company also reported that its stablecoin settlement volume had surpassed a $20 billion annualized run rate. That represents growth of more than 15 times from the corresponding period one year earlier.

Visa disclosed the figures while announcing expanded work with Credit Coop. The companies are using stablecoin-denominated revolving credit facilities to help card programs finance daily settlement obligations.

The statistics come from Visa and Credit Coop rather than independently audited transaction reports. An annualized run rate also projects recent activity over a full year. It does not mean Visa has already processed $20 billion in stablecoin settlement during 2026.

Visa stablecoin cards reach 160 live programs

Stablecoin-linked cards connect a customer’s crypto wallet or stablecoin account with Visa’s existing merchant network. The digital assets are converted or used to fund the transaction while the merchant receives payment through familiar card infrastructure.

Visa said payment volume across these programs grew nearly 200% year over year. The company did not publish the underlying dollar value, regional breakdown or transaction count in its announcement.

The latest disclosure updates figures Visa presented in June. At the time, it said more than 160 programs were either live or in development and that stablecoin settlement had reached a $7 billion annualized rate as of March.

The latest $20 billion figure suggests the settlement run rate has nearly tripled since March. However, the two figures cover Visa’s stablecoin settlement activity, not necessarily consumer purchases made through stablecoin-linked cards alone.

Card payment volume and settlement volume measure different processes. Payment volume covers purchases initiated by cardholders. Settlement volume covers money transferred between Visa and participating financial institutions or program operators. Visa previously placed its stablecoin settlement run rate near $7 billion while expanding pilots across more regions, blockchains and currencies.

Credit Coop finances the daily settlement gap

Visa’s announcement focused on a working-capital problem facing new stablecoin card programs. Operators must fund settlement obligations before receiving all corresponding payments from cardholders.

Large, established card portfolios can use warehouse credit lines or securitizations. Smaller programs may need only several million dollars, drawn and repaid daily. Legal and administrative costs can make conventional facilities uneconomical at that scale.

Credit Coop’s structure uses a stablecoin-denominated revolving credit facility secured by settlement receivables. Borrowers draw from the facility to meet their daily Visa obligations and repay the credit line as cardholder proceeds arrive.

Incoming receivables pass through Credit Coop’s Spigot smart contract. The contract automatically directs part of the proceeds toward principal and interest before transferring the remaining funds to the borrower’s operating account.

The process resembles a controlled bank lockbox. The difference is that the routing and repayment instructions execute through smart contracts, creating publicly visible transaction records.

Visa said Credit Coop receives authorized programs’ daily settlement files through a secure data connection. Credit decisions, facility sizes and repayment checks can therefore use both Visa records and onchain transaction history.

According to Visa, stronger access to settlement data helped reduce borrowing costs for some participating programs by as much as 30%. The company did not disclose individual interest rates or identify every program that received lower pricing.

Rain provides the first operating case

Rain, a Visa principal member offering stablecoin card infrastructure, has used a Credit Coop revolving facility since August 2023. The facility finances Rain’s daily Visa settlement requirements.

Credit Coop transfers funds to Rain based on the relevant Visa settlement file. Rain then funds its settlement obligation. Cardholder payments subsequently pass through smart contracts that service interest and replenish the facility.

Visa said every settlement obligation covered by the facility had been funded on time. Credit Coop reported more than $2.5 billion in cumulative financing since 2023, covering over 3,000 borrowing events and 9,000 repayment events.

Credit Coop also reported zero defaults across the platform. Those performance figures are company claims and have not been supported by a published independent audit.

Rain accounted for approximately $2 billion of the reported cumulative settlement financing. Visa said the arrangement had processed more than 2,000 borrowing events and 7,000 repayment events for Rain, generating at least $1.58 million in interest.

Rain previously confirmed that it joined Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot. The company said it settles Visa card obligations in USDC seven days a week, including weekends and holidays.

Visa has also described Rain’s use of USDC-backed receivables financing in its broader work on onchain credit. The structure is intended to reduce the need for issuers to hold idle settlement capital.

U.S. card programs test the financing route

Karta, a U.S.-issued premium Visa card operating under Rain’s bank identification number, also launched using Credit Coop financing while developing its performance record.

Visa said Karta later announced $140 million in financing in June 2026. The package included a $15 million Series A led by Galaxy Ventures and a $125 million institutional credit facility from Community Investment Management.

Visa presented Karta as an example of an early card program moving from a smaller revolving facility to institutional financing. The company said Karta’s daily settlement history contributed to the record available to larger lenders.

Moto and Xplace also use Credit Coop financing under Rain’s issuing infrastructure, according to the announcement. Visa did not disclose their facility sizes, borrowing costs or settlement volumes.

The partnership adds a credit layer to Visa’s wider stablecoin strategy. In March, Visa and Stripe-owned Bridge announced that their card programs were live in 18 countries and planned to reach more than 100 countries by the end of 2026.

Bridge-enabled cards can be used through platforms including Phantom and MetaMask. Visa said customers could spend their balances across more than 175 million merchant locations, while merchants continue receiving conventional payments.

Visa linked cards and stablecoins with its wider programmable commerce strategy, including settlement pilots and payment tools for AI agents.

Visa plans just-in-time settlement funding

Visa and Credit Coop are now working toward just-in-time funding. Under the planned model, a program’s daily settlement file would trigger a stablecoin disbursement matching the exact net amount owed.

The funds would move directly to the relevant Visa settlement address. Programs would avoid drawing a full facility in advance and holding unused capital between settlement cycles.

Visa said this model could shorten borrowing periods from days to hours. Lenders could also align their exposure more closely with actual daily obligations instead of committing the entire credit line continuously.

The model remains dependent on accurate settlement data, reliable smart contracts and sufficient stablecoin liquidity. Operational failures could prevent a program from meeting a settlement deadline even when the credit facility remains adequately funded.

Credit Coop’s zero-default record does not guarantee future performance. Stablecoin depegging, contract vulnerabilities, borrower failures and changing regulations remain potential risks.

Visa has not announced a deadline for launching just-in-time funding across all 160 programs. It also has not disclosed which stablecoins or blockchains future facilities will support.

The next stage will involve extending the model to additional issuers and determining whether their onchain repayment records can support larger institutional facilities. Visa said it expects more programs to follow Karta’s path, but that remains a company forecast.

Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees now account for just 0.69% of miner revenue as major players pivot to AI.

Key points:

• Bitcoin miners now rely on block subsidies more than at any time in the past decade, data shows.
• Bitcoin hash rate has declined by 33% since October 2025.
• Analysts warn that miners switching to AI could affect the network.

Bitcoin miner fee revenue share returns to 2016 levels

Data from onchain analytics platform Glassnode shows that fees as a proportion of miner revenue remain near decade lows after falling to just 0.52% in April.

Miners face ongoing pressure as declining Bitcoin prices and rising electricity costs squeeze profits and force smaller players out of the market. Glassnode co-founder Rafael Schultze-Kraft noted that fees had made up less than 1% of miner revenue for almost a year.

“Bitcoin was below $400 the last time fee share was this low,” he said on X. 

Bitcoin fees as a portion of miner revenue. Source: Rafael Schultze-Kraft on X.com

When transaction fee revenue drops, miners increasingly depend on the fixed block subsidy for income — the amount of newly minted BTC awarded for each mined block, currently 3.125 BTC. Bitcoin’s value has fallen nearly 50% since its October 2025 all-time high, dragging down the US dollar value of the block subsidy and further squeezing miners’ profit margins.

The latest data from onchain analytics resource Checkonchain puts the estimated average cost of producing one Bitcoin at $78,254 as of Tuesday — almost 23% above the current spot price.

Bitcoin estimated average production cost. Source: Checkonchain

Bitcoin’s network hash rate, an estimated measure of the computing power securing the network, reflects a mining sector in flux. Hash rate has declined from its October 2025 peak of 1.3 zettahashes per second (ZH/s) to 861 exahashes per second (EH/s), Checkonchain shows — a drop of 33%. 

Bitcoin hash rate net position change. Source: Checkonchain

Analyst: AI pivot is “concerning development”

In analysis published at the weekend, independent analyst William Clemente acknowledged the downturn, while noting that miners would have been incentivized to boost activity through automated difficulty readjustments. With difficulty itself now rising again, miners’ shift toward more lucrative AI computing has become conspicuous.

Related: Bitcoin sell pressure ‘closer to exhaustion’ after $4B USDT market-cap drop: CryptoQuant

“There is no other way to slice it, hash rate has been in a decline. This has taken place as miner margins got squeezed post 2022 from more competition are higher energy prices, but more importantly the pivot of many into AI/HPC, which so far have shown to be prudent business decisions for the public names that have done it,” he wrote.

As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin miner CleanSpark recently refocused on AI, switching to operating data centers after missing profit targets. Another miner, Keel Infrastructure, shut down all its US mining operations after revenue fell 50% in the second quarter.

“This dynamic has been reinforced as Bitcoin has underperformed AI related assets & the rate of change in demand for compute,” Clemente added.

Charles Edwards, founder of hedge fund and AI platform Capriole Investments, directly linked the drop in hash rate to public miners’ AI pivot.

“This is the least talked about, concerning Bitcoin development in 2026,” he argued on X, noting that the trend had accelerated since April.

Binance and RedotPay are disputing whether a Singapore case related to their nearly $473 million Hong Kong legal battle is coming to an end.

The stablecoin payments card issuer told Cointelegraph on Tuesday that it expects Binance to discontinue the Singapore proceedings following a hearing on Aug. 7. “RedotPay will be seeking legal costs arising from the discontinuance of the matter from the claimant,” a spokesperson for RedotPay said, adding that the parties would try to agree on costs.

However, Binance said it has no plans to abandon its claims. “Reports that Binance will be withdrawing its Singapore claims are false,” a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph, adding that the company “is not abandoning its claims and has informed both the court and RedotPay accordingly.”

The disagreement marks the latest development in a broader legal fight between Binance-affiliated companies and RedotPay, which includes a separate Hong Kong case seeking nearly $473 million in damages.

Singapore case part of broader legal fight

Binance-linked legal action against RedotPay first made headlines on Aug. 5, when Bloomberg reported that Nest Trading, DistributedTechnologies and Chaintecs Consulting Singapore had filed a petition in Hong Kong against RedotPay’s co-founders.

The Hong Kong plaintiffs allege RedotPay diverted more than 470,000 Binance Card users by allowing Binance Pay funds to be used for stablecoin card top-ups outside the terms of a commercial agreement. They estimated damages at $472.8 million, based on a claimed lifetime customer value of $925 per user.

Chaintecs also brought related proceedings against RedotPay affiliates in Singapore, where a hearing was scheduled for Aug. 7.

RedotPay rejected what it called “unfounded allegations” against the company and its co-founders at the time, telling Cointelegraph it would defend the claims through the legal process.

RedotPay announced its Binance Pay partnership in December 2023, allowing Binance Pay users to make direct deposits to RedotPay cards. Binance ended support for the integration as of April 3, 2026, citing a review of its merchant partners, months before the legal dispute became public.

Magazine: Fierce backlash to Ethereum’s EIP-8363 staking proposal

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.