Visa has added Canton Network to its global stablecoin settlement pilot, placing the network inside a broader expansion of the payments company's multi-chain settlement infrastructure.
The update, announced April 29, adds five blockchains to the pilot: Arc, Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo. Visa said the program now supports nine blockchains in total, building on existing support for Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar.
Visa also said the pilot has reached a $7 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter. The company positioned the expansion as a way for issuers and acquirers to settle with Visa across more blockchain networks while relying on Visa as a common settlement layer.
Image: Visa / Business Wire.
Canton's institutional angle
The Canton reference in Visa's release was specific. Visa described the network as built with configurable privacy for regulated capital markets and compliant settlement for institutional use cases.
That matters because stablecoin settlement is moving beyond crypto-native payments and into workflows where banks, fintechs, issuers, acquirers, and regulated financial institutions need privacy controls, operational reliability, and clear compliance boundaries. Canton is being included in the same settlement expansion as faster payment-oriented networks, but its stated role is different: regulated-market infrastructure rather than broad retail throughput alone.
Eric Saraniecki, Head of Network Strategy at Digital Asset and co-founder of Canton Network, said in Visa's release that Canton's design gives regulated institutions a way to explore on-chain settlement while remaining aligned with compliance requirements.
Visa's multi-chain settlement push
Visa said partners are increasingly operating in a multi-chain environment, and the settlement pilot is being expanded to give them more choice in how they access liquidity and settle with the network.
The company also pointed to several pieces of existing stablecoin infrastructure: live pilots and regional rollouts across Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa; expanded USDC settlement for U.S. banks; and more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across over 50 countries.
In that context, Canton's inclusion is less about a single-chain endorsement and more about Visa building a menu of settlement networks that can serve different market requirements. Canton gives Visa's partners an option associated with institutional privacy and regulated capital markets.
What remains undisclosed
Visa did not disclose chain-by-chain settlement volume, the timing of Canton-specific production flows, or which issuers and acquirers may use Canton first. Those details will determine the practical scale of the announcement for Canton.
Still, the announcement is a meaningful public validation point. Canton is now named inside Visa's stablecoin settlement architecture, alongside networks designed for payments, liquidity, and high-throughput settlement. For a blockchain positioned around institutional finance, that is the important part.
Sources: Visa investor release and Visa newsroom release.
