Visa is exploring a new stablecoin settlement model for institutional payments through a collaboration with Brale, the company announced on June 4, 2026.
The proof of concept will use SBC, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Brale, on the Canton Network. Visa said the work will evaluate how privacy-enabled blockchain infrastructure can support faster, more programmable settlement while helping financial institutions and payment companies maintain control over sensitive settlement transaction data.
Privacy is the central focus of the project. As stablecoin adoption grows, Visa said financial institutions are assessing how they can use blockchain-based settlement while meeting strict privacy and compliance requirements. Canton is designed to let participants transact on shared infrastructure while limiting the visibility of sensitive transaction information.
Visa has been building stablecoin settlement capabilities since 2021 and said it continues to expand those efforts, including allowing VisaNet obligations to be settled using supported stablecoins.
Through the Brale collaboration, Visa plans to evaluate SBC as an additional stablecoin option for institutional settlement use cases. SBC is natively supported on the Canton Network, enabling the companies to test how privacy-preserving infrastructure can be applied to real-world institutional payment flows.
Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, said the collaboration will help Visa evaluate what it would take to bring programmability and privacy controls into production environments for institutional settlement.
Brale founder and CEO Ben Milne said financial institutions are increasingly looking for stablecoin infrastructure that meets operational, regulatory and privacy requirements.
Visa said it views stablecoins as a scalable, next-generation settlement layer for global payments, and that collaborations like this are part of its work to advance blockchain infrastructure that can meet the privacy, compliance and interoperability standards required by financial institutions and payment networks.
The announcement did not provide a timeline for the proof of concept or state whether SBC will become a production settlement option.
