Wall Street’s payments giants aren’t sold on crypto’s utility in day-to-day transactions — at least not yet.
In earnings calls this week, both Visa and Mastercard executives offered cautious assessments of digital assets, particularly stablecoins, signaling that consumer demand hasn’t necessarily materialized in meaningful ways.
“As I’ve said before, in the United States, if a consumer wants to pay for something using a digital dollar, they have ample ways to do that today,” said Visa CEO Ryan McInerny. “They can pay from their checking account or their savings account. It’s become pretty easy to do. So we don’t see a lot of product market fit for stablecoin payments and consumer payments in digitally developed markets.”
Stablecoins are intended to make payments faster by allowing money to move 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 be settled in seconds and operate around the clock, including weekends and holidays.
In a September report, JP Morgan described stablecoins as “a digital, on-chain form of fiat money” that is “easy to store and trade” and “fast, especially in cross-border money movements.” The bank said stablecoins could even be “a better form than fiat” in some situations, thanks to lower costs and round-the-clock settlement.
But the report also warned of risks, including the potential for a destabilizing run on stablecoins. “TerraUSD’s May 2022 collapse highlights how quickly a run can occur in an asset class that trades 24/7,” analyst Joyce Ho wrote.
Mastercard struck a more open tone than Visa, with CEO Michael Mierbach saying the company is “leaning in” to new technologies like stablecoins and AI-powered agents, but even he framed the company’s role more as enabling infrastructure than leading transformation.
“For us, stablecoins are another currency we can support in our network,” Miebach said. He pointed to work with MetaMask, Ripple and Gemini, but emphasized that the current dominant use case remains commerce, not payments.
“We have achieved good features by enabling the purchase of these assets, facilitating transactions and supporting stablecoins for settlement over our network,” he said.
Both companies have bet on blockchain infrastructure – Mastercard with pilots for on-chain identity and settlement tools and Visa with experiments in stablecoin settlement using USDC. But despite these efforts, neither treats crypto as a near-term threat or opportunity to their core businesses.
This attitude contrasts with the scale of on-chain activity. According to data from Glassnode, bitcoin alone processed over $25 trillion worth of transactions by 2025, more than Visa ($17 trillion) and Mastercard ($11 trillion) combined. While Bitcoin’s volume includes high-frequency and large institutional transfers, the size reflects growing blockchain demand across financial applications.
SoFi’s crypto push
Meanwhile, SoFi, the digital bank and fintech firm, is leaning more aggressively into crypto.
After beating Wall Street estimates in its fourth-quarter earnings, SoFi’s stock rose briefly before falling, now 5% lower.
Just over 63,000 accounts were actively buying, selling and holding digital assets in the fourth quarter of 2025, although the option did not become fully available until the end of December. Nevertheless, the company said it sees 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 underpinned by bank-grade stability and security.”
