When Payment Giants Stop Fighting Crypto (And Start Joining It)

Plot twist nobody saw coming: Visa and Mastercard aren’t来disrupt crypto anymore—they’re integrating it.

Visa teamed up with Stripe’s Bridge in April 2025, letting card users link stablecoin holdings directly to their payment cards. Mastercard followed in June, plugging USDC, PayPal USD and other stablecoins straight into their settlement systems via partnerships with Circle, Fiserv, Paxos and PayPal.

The irony? Five years ago everyone were hyped that Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin would kill credit cards. Spoiler: they didn’t. Instead, the card titans said “we’re not replacing you, we’re adopting you.”

What’s Actually Happening

This isn’t crypto winning the battle—it’s infrastructure maturing. Stablecoins aren’t designed as investments; they’re boring by nature (which is the point). They’re tools for fast, borderless settlements. Visa and Mastercard just realized that boring tools make great products.

The real winners? Stablecoin issuers like Circle and PayPal, not the stablecoins themselves. When payment networks at this scale start moving trillions through your rails, volume is everything.

The Losers

Payment-focused coins like Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin are facing an existential question: if Visa can move stablecoins at scale, why choose a volatile alternative? Dogecoin and Shiba Inu? They survive on memes and celebrity tweets, so… maybe they’re actually fine.

The real battleground is international transfers—watch this space get crowded fast.