How US Payment Giants Are Moving Into Stablecoins, and Which Coins Your App Should Accept

• Stablecoins are moving beyond crypto trading into payments, and the major US payment companies are positioning themselves where money enters and leaves them.

• PayPal put a dollar token in consumers' hands, Visa settles with some banks in stablecoins and is piloting stablecoin payouts, and Stripe and Mastercard bought conversion infrastructure.

• Open USD, launched with Stripe, Mastercard, Visa and Coinbase as partners, removes the fees for creating and redeeming the coin.

• For an app, the work is to accept coins on the networks its users arrive on, check what each provider allows by operation and country, and give users a way out in their own currency. |

Moving a stablecoin from one wallet to another has become the cheap part. On BNB Chain, the network fee for a typical stablecoin transfer was less than a cent in Q3 2026, our report shows.

The higher cost comes in the step where euros or yen become a token, and in the step back. Those are the two conversion points the payment companies are moving into.

For your app, that means knowing which conversion point your customers arrive from and which one they leave through. The sections below start with the company closest to your users, move to the ones furthest away, and end with the coin several of them back together.

Of the four companies, PayPal is the closest to the user. Its stablecoin, PYUSD, is held in the account PayPal customers already use to pay online and send money to friends.

Of the four companies, PayPal is the closest to the user. Its stablecoin, PYUSD, is held in the account PayPal customers already use to pay online and send money to friends.

PYUSD at a glance

• What it is: PayPal's dollar stablecoin, issued by Paxos, bought and sold at $1.00 on PayPal.

• Reach: 70 markets since March 2026.

• What eligible holders can do: buy, hold, send, move to third-party wallets, and convert to local currency on withdrawal, with features varying by market.

PYUSD has let holders send it to external wallets since its launch in 2023. Now that it reaches 70 markets through a mainstream payment account, it can end up in products that never planned for it.

Those markets matter because dollar stablecoins are often bought with other money. On BNB Chain, the large majority of the value spent on them through us came in currencies other than the dollar, so apps serving those buyers need a checkout that takes their currency.”

PYUSD lives on several blockchain networks at once, and a coin sent on one network can't simply be received on another. A deposit sent on a network the app doesn't support generates a support ticket from a user who may not know which network they used.

For PYUSD, choose the networks you accept, name them on the deposit screen, and confirm whether your provider lets users sell it as well as buy it.

Visa took a different route from PayPal. It uses stablecoins in settlement, out of the cardholder's sight, and keeps the card as what cardholders touch on the way in and on the way out.

Settlement is the regular transfer of funds between banks and Visa that runs behind card payments, and it is the step where Visa has started to use stablecoins.

Since December 2025, select US banking partners, starting with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, have been able to settle with Visa in USDC, Circle's dollar stablecoin, as an alternative to the traditional bank transfer. Across all its programs, Visa said in September 2026 that its stablecoin settlement was on pace for more than $20 billion a year.

Bank settlement relies on large, infrequent transfers, the same kind that carries most of the value on BNB Chain. In the report's data, transfers of $10,000 or more were a small share of all transfers but held the bulk of the value. That makes settlement a natural first step for a card network.

Visa Direct is the network's system for sending funds to cardholders. A pilot announced in November 2025 extends it to stablecoin wallets, with a wider rollout planned for the second half of 2026.

Visa Direct already works in the other direction too. In January 2026, we announced a partnership with Visa to pay crypto sales out to Visa cards through it.

When users cash out to a card, the reach of the card network and of your provider limits your exit. Adding crypto cash-out to a product starts with asking your provider which cards and countries it covers and how long a payout takes.

Stripe and Mastercard went furthest from the user. Both acquired companies that convert between bank money and stablecoins for businesses, which places them at the entry and the exit of a stablecoin payment.

The two deals

• Stripe acquired Bridge. The deal closed in February 2025.

• Mastercard acquired BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, the largest stablecoin acquisition at the time it was announced. The deal was completed in August 2026.

Owning conversion gives them a role in the stablecoin payments that pass through it, whichever coin the payment uses. Stripe has taken that role one step further, since Bridge later became the issuer of Open USD, covered below.

Mastercard's Raj Seshadri told analysts that the bulk of stablecoin flows will begin and end in traditional money, Fortune reported. Our exit data points the same way, with more than half of the value we paid out from BNB Chain converted out of dollars.

With processors and card networks running the conversion points, your edge as an app is which currencies your customers can leave in and how few steps it takes.

Open USD is the one coin in this article that three of the companies back together, with Coinbase as a fourth partner. It targets the costliest part of a stablecoin payment, converting between dollars and the token.

OUSD basics

• What it is: Open USD, a dollar stablecoin from Open Standard, issued by Stripe's Bridge.

• Live since: the end of September 2026.

• Runs on: four blockchain networks at launch.

Routes to create and redeem it: Stripe, Mastercard through BVNK, Visa, and Coinbase, all founding partners.

Through any of those routes, businesses can create new OUSD in exchange for dollars and redeem it for dollars, one dollar for one coin, at no cost. Open Standard charges a small transaction fee separately.

Open Standard rewards partners in proportion to the OUSD supply and activity they drive on their platforms. Those partners handle payments for businesses, so OUSD is likely to reach your customers first as a payout or a settlement currency, before they choose to buy it.

No one assigns the short names that coins trade under, so anyone can launch a coin and call it whatever they like. OUSD was already taken before Open Standard. Origin Protocol has used the ticker since 2020 for Origin Dollar, an unrelated stablecoin that pays its holders a return.

Provider lists work around this by naming each coin together with its network. Our list also shows that availability depends on the operation and the country, and OUSD isn't on it at the time of writing.

Because tickers can collide, identify every coin by issuer and contract address, its unique ID on each network. Add OUSD once providers start paying your users in it.

The table pulls the coins from this article into one view, with USDC included because Visa settles in it. Each row ends with the work that coin creates for your product.

Stablecoin use is already broad. Across Q3 2026, the monthly average came to more than 21 million addresses that sent or received stablecoins on BNB Chain, as our full report shows. Many of the people behind those addresses arrive at wallets, exchanges and fintechs with a coin already in hand.

If your customers hold stablecoins, the next decision is who takes them in and out. For wallets, exchanges and fintechs, Mercuryo covers both, with purchases by card or phone wallet in the user's currency and, for supported coins and networks, cash-out to a Visa or Mastercard card.

What are stablecoins used for in payments? Moving dollars between people and businesses. Some US banks settle with Visa in USDC, platforms pay out workers in stablecoins, and apps let users buy and sell them in their own currency. We run that buy and sell step for the wallets, exchanges and fintechs we work with.

Is PYUSD the same as PayPal crypto? No. PYUSD is PayPal's dollar stablecoin, one of several crypto assets PayPal customers can buy, hold, and sell, and eligible holders can move it to outside wallets. Mercuryo offers PYUSD for purchase inside MetaMask, on Solana.

What is the OUSD stablecoin? A dollar stablecoin from Open Standard, live since September 2026 and issued by Bridge. Businesses create and redeem it through Stripe, Mastercard, Visa and Coinbase, and it is unrelated to Origin Dollar, an older token with the same ticker.