Wall Street’s payments giants aren’t convinced of crypto’s usefulness in everyday transactions — at least not yet.
During earnings calls this week, Visa and Mastercard executives offered cautious valuations of digital assets, particularly stablecoins, signaling that consumer demand has not necessarily materialized in any meaningful way.
“As I said before, in the United States, if a consumer wants to pay for something using a digital dollar, today they have many ways to do so,” said Ryan McInerny, CEO of Visa. “They can pay from their checking account or their savings account. It’s become quite easy to do so. So we don’t see a lot of product markets suitable for stablecoin payments and consumer payments in digitally developed markets.”
Stablecoins are intended to make payments faster by allowing money to flow directly between parties on a blockchain, without going through banks or card networks. Unlike traditional payments, which can take days to settle, especially across borders, stablecoin transactions can clear in seconds and operate 24 hours a day, including weekends and holidays.
In a September report, JP Morgan described stablecoins as “a digital form of on-chain fiat currency” that is “easy to store and process” and “fast, particularly in the context of cross-border money movements.” The bank said stablecoins could even be “a better form than fiat currency” in some situations, thanks to lower costs and 24-hour settlement.
But the report also warns of risks, including the possibility of a destabilizing run on stablecoins. “The collapse of TerraUSD in May 2022 highlights how quickly upside can occur, in an asset class that trades 24/7,” wrote analyst Joyce Ho.
Mastercard has taken a more open tone than Visa, with CEO Michael Mierbach saying the company is “leaning in” on emerging technologies such as stablecoins and AI-based agents, but even he has framed the company’s role more as enabling infrastructure than a transformation leader.
“For us, stablecoins are another currency that we can support within our network,” Miebach said. He highlighted work with MetaMask, Ripple and Gemini, but stressed that the current dominant use case remains commerce and not payments.
“We have come a long way in enabling the purchase of these assets, facilitating transactions and supporting stablecoins for settlement on our network,” he said.
Both companies have dabbled in blockchain infrastructure: Mastercard with pilots for on-chain identity and settlement tools, and Visa with stable settlement experiments using USDC. But despite these efforts, cryptocurrencies are also not seen as a near-term threat or opportunity to their core businesses.
This position contrasts with the scale of on-chain activity. According to Glassnode data, Bitcoin alone settled over $25 trillion in transactions in 2025, more than Visa ($17 trillion) and Mastercard ($11 trillion) combined. Although Bitcoin’s volume includes large, high-frequency institutional transfers, its size reflects the growing demand for blockchain in financial applications.
SoFi’s crypto push
Meanwhile, SoFi, the digital bank and fintech company, is leaning more aggressively into crypto.
After beating Wall Street estimates for its fourth-quarter results, SoFi’s stock briefly rose before falling, now down 5%.
Just over 63,000 accounts were actively buying, selling, and holding digital assets in Q4 2025, although the option did not become fully available until late December. Nonetheless, the company said it views crypto as part of a larger strategy.
CEO Anthony Noto told investors that SoFi is “moving with urgency to lead the next phase of financial services by delivering crypto and blockchain innovation backed by bank-grade stability and security.”
