Visa’s CFO downplays the importance of stablecoin and agentic commerce to the U.S. payments giant—at least in the short term | Fortune

Visa first began providing stablecoin settlements in 2023 and now has 130 stablecoin-linked card issuing applications throughout 40 international locations. It’s additionally experimenting with agentic commerce, or permitting AI brokers to make payments on their very own.

But simply $7 billion of annual settlements on Visa’s platform are made in cryptocurrencies, in contrast with $14 trillion total.

“I’m hesitant to lean into the stablecoin and agentic commerce narratives an excessive amount of,” Chris Suh, Visa’s chief monetary officer, tells Fortune. “For those who have a look at our enterprise immediately, the overwhelming majority of it has nothing to do with these issues.”

Visa reported web income of $11.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 17% year-on-year. That marks the quickest progress for the firm since 2022.

“Our momentum in client, industrial and cash motion is clearly robust and will strengthen with agentic commerce and stablecoins,” mentioned Visa CEO Ryan McInerney throughout the Q2 earnings name. “In lots of international locations round the world, particularly in rising markets, customers and companies are more and more utilizing stablecoins as a retailer of worth…we’re offering on-ramps and off-ramps with stablecoin-linked Visa playing cards.”

Suh attributes Visa’s progress largely to the “mature fiat world” it has lengthy operated in, pointing to jumps in payments quantity, cross-border payments and processed transactions, slightly than its newer initiatives like stablecoins and agentic commerce. (In Q2, international payments quantity was up 9%, cross-border quantity was up 11% and complete processed transactions grew 9%.)

“The state of our companies in cross-border, home, debit and credit score is extremely good throughout all areas,” Suh says. “Agentic commerce and stablecoins are companies Visa doesn’t monetize very effectively immediately, and that could possibly be model new TAM for us to go after.”

Suh’s warning on stablecoins and AI constrasts with the extra optimistic view from different Visa executives. Stephen Karpin, Visa’s Asia-Pacific head, beforehand framed stablecoins as a key half of the firm’s technique. “We wish to make [stablecoins] one of the choices to make and obtain payments throughout the world, when the regulatory setting is prepared,” he mentioned to Fortune in November. “We’ve acquired some property in the type of know-how and functionality, and need to assist companies massive and small begin conducting commerce in Web3.”

Visa first unveiled its AI-powered commerce push in April 2025, rolling out Visa Clever Commerce, which allowed AI brokers to store and pay on a person’s behalf. By late 2025, it had expanded its agentic commerce pilots to Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. 

“One of the issues lacking from the present state of a LLM-powered chatbot is the skill to make cost by way of an agent,” Karpin mentioned final yr throughout Visa’s APAC launch of Clever Commerce.

Asia as ‘check mattress’

Asia is one of Visa’s fastest-growing areas, contributing round 14% of payments quantity on Visa’s platforms, up 6.5% year-on-year. But Suh provides that the area additionally serves as a lab for Visa’s newest merchandise. Asia has “totally different flavors of progress,” combining rising and mature markets. 

“Japan, for instance, is a really distinctive marketplace for us,” Suh says. “It has a much bigger money share than some other tier one economic system in the world, and that’s an attention-grabbing panorama to function in.” 

He provides that Asia is the supply of a lot of the innovation round payments. “We see extra digital wallets per capita in this area than wherever else in the world,” Suh says. 

In 2023, Visa launched its Visa Flex Credential, with native issuer Sumitomo Mitsui Card Firm. The know-how permits customers to consolidate up to 5 playing cards right into a single credential; Visa later expanded the service to North America, Europe, Africa, and the Center East. 

“We’ve invested considerably in Asia—our workers are native, our shoppers are native,” Suh says. “After we convey options to market, they’re very custom-made to the markets we function in.”

As for the future of Visa’s bets on stablecoins and agentic commerce, Suh stays constructive that they’ll repay ultimately–even when they don’t in the subsequent few quarters. “Each agentic commerce and stablecoins are essential investments that immediately don’t have rapid ROI,” he says. 

“They gained’t repay in the subsequent six months, however might over the subsequent six years.”