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.

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has put another interest-rate increase on the table after saying inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% target, sending Bitcoin below $80,000 as traders raised their rate-hike bets.

Warsh says inflation must return to 2% faster

The Federal Reserve’s published remarks show that Warsh made price stability the central focus of his first Jackson Hole keynote as chair, describing the 2% PCE inflation goal as a “firm, fixed target.”

Warsh said the Fed’s preferred measure, the 12-month change in the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, stands at 3.7%. The six-month change has reached 4.1%, while comparable headline and core Consumer Price Index readings also remain elevated.

“So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices,” Warsh said.

Although the summer PCE and CPI reports came in better than expected, Warsh said the releases did not show that underlying inflation trends had “meaningfully improved.” Progress from the inflation highs reached in 2022 has also been modest during the past two years, he added.

Looking beneath the headline figures, Warsh said 54% of the 199 goods and services in the PCE basket recorded price increases above 3% during the past 12 months. The share was lower than the post-pandemic peak of about 77% but remained far above the 32% average recorded during the two decades before the pandemic.

Over the past six months, 49% of the basket posted annualized price increases above 3%, according to the Fed chair. Commodity prices have also risen recently, leaving policymakers to assess whether the move could add to inflation risks.

“We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do,” Warsh said.

Warsh did not commit to a specific interest-rate decision, saying he was committed to a policy discipline rather than a predetermined outcome. However, Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen, told crypto.news that the wording left additional increases available if inflation remains elevated.

Kennis described the speech as clearly hawkish, pointing to Warsh’s statement that he would be “hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.”

“He added the Fed has ‘work to do’ unless inflation moves to 2% ‘clearly and at sufficient speed,’ which is a signal that rate hikes are on the table if elevated inflation persists.”

Strong US economy gives the Fed room to act

Warsh’s inflation warning came alongside an upbeat assessment of the American economy, which the Fed chair said appeared to have strengthened despite pressure in housing and agriculture.

Business investment in equipment and intangible assets has grown by about 9% over four quarters, its fastest pace since 2021, according to the speech. Warsh attributed more than half of this year’s capital-expenditure growth to the artificial intelligence buildout.

S&P 500 company profits have climbed by more than 20% during the past year, while corporate bond and leveraged-loan spreads remain near the lower end of their historical ranges. Strong issuance and comparatively easy bank-lending standards led Warsh to say that credit markets show few signs of policy restraint.

Labor conditions have also remained stable. The unemployment rate stands at 4.1%, while the four-week average of jobless claims remains close to its lowest level in decades, according to Warsh.

At the July meeting, most Federal Open Market Committee members voted to wait for more information before changing rates, even as policymakers agreed that inflation remained too high. Warsh said the committee also expressed a shared readiness to respond if conditions required action.

For American investors, the Fed’s next decision could affect Treasury yields, the dollar and prices across risk assets, including US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Polymarket contracts cited in the supplied report placed the probability of at least one rate increase during 2026 at 68%, up from less than 50% a week earlier.

The prediction market placed the chance of a 25-basis-point increase at the September meeting at about 50%, while the probability of no change stood near 51%, with rounding and changing trades allowing the displayed figures to overlap. August CPI and PPI reports due before the meeting will give policymakers more data on whether price pressure is easing.

Bitcoin falls below $80,000 after Warsh’s speech

Following the keynote, Bitcoin fell from an intraday level above $80,000 to about $79,200, leaving the asset down nearly 2% on the day.

The decline interrupted a rally that had carried Bitcoin above $80,000 on Aug. 25 for the first time in almost 15 weeks. As previously reported, BTC had gained about 28% in eight days and tested resistance between $80,000 and $82,000 after US spot ETFs attracted approximately $1.92 billion in weekly inflows.

Before the speech, Nicolai Sondergaard, senior research analyst at Nansen, said Bitcoin’s higher-timeframe trend remained bullish, but several shorter-term measures had become less convincing. He cited crowded long funding, contracting open interest, fading ETF trading volume, and mixed exchange flows.

Sondergaard said the importance of the address would come from its effect on interest rates, the dollar and the Fed’s response to new economic data, rather than a simple hawkish-versus-dovish label.

“A hawkish signal is more dangerous because it hits crowded longs. For upside to stick, we need lower yields, stable dollar liquidity, improving CVD and BTC holding above roughly $80.4k with OI expanding.”

Without those conditions, Sondergaard described the setup before the keynote as a “fragile bullish structure, not a high-conviction breakout.”

Positioning had already become vulnerable before Jackson Hole. Bitcoin previously fell 4.1% from $81,238 to $77,870, while long liquidations reached about $270 million across the crypto market. Bitcoin futures open interest dropped roughly 4.5% from the level recorded around the $81,238 peak.

Bitcoin options expiry clears $6.4 billion overhang

Warsh delivered his speech after approximately $6.4 billion in Bitcoin options expired on Deribit at 08:00 UTC on Aug. 28, clearing a large block of contracts shortly before the market reacted to his comments.

The options expiry included roughly 81,700 contracts, comprising 44,639 calls and 37,061 puts. Calls outnumbered puts at a ratio of 0.83, with the largest concentrations sitting around the $75,000 and $80,000 call strikes.

Lacie Zhang, research analyst at Bitget Wallet, said the positioning showed constructive rather than euphoric confidence. Calls trading at higher premiums than comparable puts suggested that traders were paying for exposure to further gains after Bitcoin’s rally instead of heavily buying downside protection, she added.

“The $6.4 billion notional should not be read as a directional bet, since much of it reflects hedged dealer books and spread positions.”

According to Zhang, strike concentrations mattered more for price pinning and dealer hedging before settlement. With the contracts now expired, she said traders should watch whether open interest returns at higher strike prices and whether call premiums remain elevated across September and December maturities.

“If it does, that would confirm more durable bullish conviction; if skew normalizes quickly, the move was mainly expiry-specific positioning,” Zhang said.

Strive’s SATA preferred stock has generated an estimated amount of funding sufficient to purchase 1,192 Bitcoin this week, according to live market monitoring.

SATA has reopened Strive’s Bitcoin funding channel

BitcoinTreasuries.NET estimated on Aug. 28 that trading in Strive’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, known by its ticker SATA, had generated enough funds to purchase about 1,192 BTC during the week.

The running figure continued to rise after the U.S. market opened on Friday. Within the first two hours of trading, the tracker estimated that SATA had added funding capacity for more than 100 BTC.

Bullish, an institutional crypto exchange and market infrastructure operator, has agreed to extend a $100 million stablecoin-backed debt facility to USD.AI to fund loans secured by GPU hardware. The companies said the financing will support onchain lending to AI infrastructure operators, with collateral tied to the computing equipment rather than the borrowers’ broader corporate balance sheets.

The move reinforces USD.AI’s strategy of turning stablecoin liquidity into GPU infrastructure credit, while giving Bullish an additional pathway to deepen liquidity around GPU-backed tokenized debt through a dedicated trading and market-making effort.

Key takeaways

• Bullish is providing a $100 million stablecoin-based debt facility to USD.AI for GPU-secured lending.
• USD.AI’s loans are collateralized by the underlying GPU hardware, not general corporate assets.
• Bullish plans to list USD.AI’s sUSDai across multiple trading pairs and run a market-making program to support liquidity.
• The facility builds on USD.AI’s recent GPU-backed financing activity, including loans tied to Nvidia B300 and B200 GPU configurations.

Stablecoin credit aimed at GPU-backed collateral

Under the announced arrangement, USD.AI will deploy the facility by extending financing to AI infrastructure operators whose repayment claims are secured by the GPUs themselves. The structure is designed to reduce reliance on general corporate collateral by anchoring loan exposure to specific, identifiable computing hardware.

USD.AI is an onchain financing platform built by Permian Labs. It positions itself as an intermediary between stablecoin liquidity and the funding needs of the GPU infrastructure sector, where capacity purchases and deployments often require large upfront capital outlays.

Bullish plans token support and tighter secondary liquidity

Bullish said it intends to list USD.AI’s sUSDai token across multiple trading pairs. It also plans to back the token with a dedicated market-making program, aiming to improve secondary liquidity and strengthen price discovery for debt products linked to GPU collateral.

For market participants, the practical significance is that tokenized, asset-backed credit can become easier to access and hedge when trading venues and market makers provide consistent bid-ask liquidity. Bullish’s involvement suggests it wants this GPU-backed financing stack to be more than a primary-deal story, with ongoing tradability playing a larger role.

Growing GPU financing footprint

This $100 million facility expands USD.AI’s GPU-linked lending business. In June, USD.AI announced a $98.1 million loan backed by 2,304 Nvidia B300 GPUs. Around the same time, it also disclosed that a $34 million loan backed by 768 Nvidia B200 GPUs had been fully funded.

Taken together, those earlier announcements highlight a pattern: USD.AI’s lending is tied to identifiable GPU batches and configurations, and its ability to complete funding rounds indicates demand for this style of AI infrastructure credit. With Bullish adding a larger stablecoin debt line, investors and operators may expect USD.AI to scale the volume of GPU-secured financing more quickly, assuming ongoing collateral sourcing and operational rollout can keep pace.

Previous Bullish investment adds continuity

The deal also follows earlier capital support from Bullish Capital. According to the companies, Bullish Capital made a $4 million investment into USD.AI in September 2025—described by Bullish as its first investment since going public.

That continuity matters because it suggests Bullish is not treating the current facility as a one-off product test. Instead, the firm appears to be expanding an existing relationship into a larger operational role—using stablecoin-backed debt infrastructure alongside trading and liquidity initiatives.

More broadly, the arrangement underscores a growing intersection between digital asset market infrastructure and AI hardware financing, where stablecoins and onchain credit mechanics can potentially shorten the path from liquidity to real-world infrastructure commitments.

Investors should watch how sUSDai trading develops after listing and whether Bullish’s market-making program meaningfully improves liquidity depth over time. Equally important will be how USD.AI manages loan origination, GPU collateral custody, and the operational mechanics of hardware-backed repayment as deal sizes scale under this new facility.