Visa made two stablecoin announcements. It joined BLOOM, a Monetary Authority of Singapore initiative that aims to enable settlement involving regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits, including the distribution and clearing of settlement assets. BLOOM, which stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, already has several banks and stablecoin issuers as participants, including JP Morgan and Circle. Separately, Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group announced a deal with Visa to adopt the Visa Stablecoin Platform.
In the Shinhan case, stablecoin legislation is not yet settled in Korea, but there’s been significant activity of late. Shinhan plans to use the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP) to verify stablecoin issuance, remittance and redemption, with the wording sounding slightly short of a full commitment. They will also work together to explore a business model that works in Korea. Apart from issuing a stablecoin itself, Shinhan intends to use stablecoins for card settlement, functionality that Visa first started trialing five years ago and is now relatively mature.
Card settlement is relevant to the BLOOM announcement. Payments firm and card issuer Nium joined the Visa stablecoin settlement pilot in November last year. A key benefit is the ability to make payments seven days a week rather than being limited to banking hours. One might wonder why a card issuer would want to pay faster or more regularly, but the reality is Visa would require significant collateral or prefunding from Nium, so regular payment reduces the need for such a large buffer. Nium is also Visa’s partner for the BLOOM work, so given the existing relationship, the question is what BLOOM adds.
Article continues …
Want the full story? Pro subscribers get complete articles, exclusive industry analysis, and early access to legislative updates that keep you ahead of the competition. Join the professionals who are choosing deeper insights over surface level news.
