Visa's Instant Settlement of Stablecoins with Cross River and Lead Bank

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Introduction

Welcome to the Tokenized newsletter, brought to you by the creators of the Tokenized Podcast Simon Taylor of Fintech Brainfood, Pet Berisha of Sporting Crypto, and Shwetabh Sameer of Molten Ventures.

We are the newsletter for institutions that need help preparing for a Tokenized future.

We run through the headlines every week, what it means for you and a market readout. Always with an institutional, business-focused perspective. 

Join us every week as we meet your Tokenization needs.

Simon’s Market Readout 💬 

The recent announcements from Cross River and Lead Bank that they can now instantly settle in stablecoins is monumental. Today, the banking system means card issuers and merchants wait three to seven days to receive funds the customer thinks have already moved. It's madness. Visa will instantly settle USDC on Solana, and what they needed was a bank that could honor delivery of those stablecoins and help people on and off ramp to fiat.

This is the beginning of stablecoins as the preferred rail: the instant rail.

When everybody was asking "what's the domestic use case for stablecoins?", the answer isn't consumers with wallets buying things in stores. The answer is the plumbing changes. Visa just launched its Stablecoins Advisory Practice, because every company now needs a stablecoin strategy. Their settlement volume is already running at a $3.5 billion annualized rate.

I find myself constantly in conversations going through fundamentals: where does minting and burning a stablecoin meet the existing payment system? Where does that meet the core systems of a bank? This might sound basic to veterans, but basics are fundamentals, and the fact that so many are working through these details shows the industry is taking this seriously. As they should.

The FDIC just published a proposed rule for how the organizations they supervise - the banks - could create subsidiaries to issue stablecoins. Those subsidiaries would be overseen by the FDIC under a whole series of requirements ensuring safety, soundness, and safe redemption processes.

Today there's one major open question about stablecoins: what happens during a run? What happens when redemptions spike? By writing down in black and white how redemptions must happen, how record keeping must work, how supervision would function - the FDIC has given banks clear rules to act with certainty. And the OCC?  On December 12, they granted conditional trust bank charters to Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity. The formal GENIUS Act rulemaking for non-bank issuers is next - all agencies have until October 2026 to finalize.

Put it together: increasing regulatory clarity, an industry grappling with fundamentals, and small banks seizing the opportunity to bring these benefits to market.

Three strategic considerations:

1. Seven-day settlement is now available. Not five business days. Seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. That's not a crypto story. That's a treasury management dream. Banks can now capture float they were previously losing to settlement windows.

2. The domestic use case question is answered. Visa's Global Head of Growth Products said it directly: "Our banking partners are not only asking about it - they're preparing to use it." The use case is behind the scenes for settlements, far more than for consumers.

3. Settlement speed is becoming a product differentiator. Visa just gave every bank in America the on-ramp. The nimble ones who move first capture the treasury float. But others will follow and this will normalize quickly.

My prediction: by end of 2026, instant settlement via stablecoins becomes table stakes for banks. The institutions making infrastructure decisions today are determining competitive positioning for the next decade.

Stories You Can't Miss 📰

💸 JPMorgan Launches Tokenized Money Market Fund on Ethereum

The world's largest bank just launched a money market fund on Ethereum. JPMorgan Asset Management's My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY) sits on the bank's Kinexys Digital Assets platform and lets institutional clients access money market yield onchain. 24/7. Near-instant settlement. No batch processing.

This is the sweep account, rebuilt from scratch to work globally around the clock.

Key Points:

• Rethinking cash management: Traditional sweep accounts move idle cash into money funds overnight, then back in the morning. Batch-processed. Timezone-dependent. Multiple intermediaries. MONY compresses that cycle. In principle, a treasurer could put cash to work on a Saturday night and access it again Sunday morning. No wire windows. No waiting for markets to open.

• USDC as production infrastructure: Subscriptions and redemptions work in USDC, not just fiat. JPMorgan treating Circle's stablecoin as core infrastructure for a flagship product signals where stablecoins sit in institutional finance now. This isn't a pilot.

• What MONY holds: Short-term U.S. Treasuries and fully collateralized repos. Interest paid daily, dividends accruing daily. Conventional money market structure running on unconventional rails.

• Institutional parameters: $100 million seed capital from JPMorgan. $1 million minimum investment. Qualified investors only - individuals need $5 million in investments, institutions need $25 million.

The Tokenized Take:

The competition for tokenized money market funds just escalated. BlackRock's BUIDL is close to $3 billion in AUM. Franklin Templeton's BENJI carved out its niche. Now JPMorgan enters with distribution muscle and its own blockchain infrastructure already processing $2 billion+ in daily transaction volume through Kinexys.

What makes MONY different isn't the yield - money market rates are money market rates. It's the infrastructure play. JPMorgan now offers deposit tokens (JPMD) on Base, money market funds on Ethereum, and commercial paper on Solana. They're treating public blockchains as settlement rails, building toward a treasury stack that spans multiple chains. The pieces may not be fully interoperable yet - JPMD on Base and MONY on Ethereum are separate rails today - but the direction is clear.

The USDC integration matters. JPMorgan could have built this as purely proprietary. Instead, they're accepting Circle's stablecoin for subscriptions and redemptions. That's a pragmatic acknowledgment that institutional clients already hold USDC, want to deploy it productively, and expect JPMorgan to meet them where they are.

Most treasury teams don't move cash at midnight on Saturday. But they do keep excess buffers because moving money during business hours still takes too long. When liquidity becomes near-instant, you can run leaner. That's the operational unlock - not 24/7 access for its own sake, but reducing the friction that forces treasury teams to have conservative cash positioning.

Money market funds represent ~$7.7 trillion in assets. JPMorgan isn't chasing a niche -they're positioning for a massive existing market to move onchain.

The stack is taking shape. Deposit tokens for payments. Tokenized money market funds for yield. Commercial paper issuance for clients like Galaxy Digital. Layer by layer, JPMorgan is rebuilding treasury infrastructure on blockchain rails, while making it feel like the same banking relationship clients already have.

Every corporate treasurer managing significant cash positions will want to understand this. Not because it's crypto. But because it's better treasury management.

🏛️ Visa Launches Stablecoin Advisory Practice. And Turns On U.S. Settlement

Every bank is asking the same question right now: "What's our stablecoin strategy?"

And when they don't know the answer, who do they call? Their card network.

Visa just launched its Stablecoin Advisory Practice - a formal consulting service to help banks, fintechs, and merchants figure out strategy, technology, operations, and implementation for stablecoins. And in the same week, they flipped the switch on USDC settlement for U.S. banks.

Key Points:

• Formalizing what was already happening: Visa has quietly completed 20+ advisory engagements globally before this formal launch. The company says it expects client volume to scale to hundreds of organizations. The service covers the fundamentals most banks need to understand before building anything: What is minting? What is burning? What does the actual flow of funds look like?

• The client list tells the story: Navy Federal Credit Union. VyStar. Pathward. These aren't crypto-native companies experimenting at the edges. These are established financial institutions trying to figure out where stablecoins fit their existing business. The use cases they're exploring: cross-border payments (especially to countries with volatile currencies) and B2B transactions.

•  Visa's stablecoin footprint keeps growing: $3.5 billion annualized run rate in stablecoin settlement volume as of November 30. 130+ stablecoin-linked card programs across 40+ countries. Visa first piloted USDC settlement in 2021 and has been running live settlements since 2023.

• U.S. stablecoin settlement is now live: Cross River Bank and Lead Bank are the first U.S. participants, settling with Visa in USDC over Solana. Broader U.S. availability is planned through 2026. Visa is also a design partner for Circle's Arc blockchain and plans to operate a validator node once Arc goes live.

• Seven-day settlement changes the game: Banks can now settle seven days a week - not five business days. That includes weekends and holidays. For anyone who's ever managed treasury operations, that's not a crypto story. That's a liquidity management breakthrough.

The Tokenized Take:

This is what mainstreaming looks like. Stablecoins went from "crypto thing" to "thing your consultant helps you implement."

When Visa (which is not a blockchain startup, not a crypto exchange) is running advisory engagements on stablecoin strategy and turning on live settlement infrastructure in the same week, the conversation has shifted.

The client profile matters here. Navy Federal is the largest credit union in the United States with nearly 15 million members. These aren't institutions chasing crypto hype. They're operationally conservative organizations with fiduciary obligations and regulatory oversight. When they're paying Visa to explain stablecoin mechanics, stablecoins have moved from "emerging technology to monitor" to "capability gap to address".

The use cases tell you where the real demand sits. Cross-border payments to countries with volatile currencies means FX exposure and correspondent banking delays. Stablecoins offer dollar stability and near-instant settlement. B2B transactions involve wire fees, cutoff times and reconciliation overhead that stablecoins compress dramatically. These aren't theoretical benefits - they're operational improvements that treasury teams can quantify.

But here's what makes the settlement announcement significant: it answers everyone who said, "there's no domestic use case for stablecoins."

The use case isn't consumer-facing. It's behind the scenes: in settlement, in treasury management, in liquidity optimization. As Visa's Global Head of Growth Products put it: "Our banking partners are not only asking about it - they're preparing to use it."

Seven-day settlement windows. Automated treasury operations. Interoperability between traditional rails and blockchain infrastructure. That's the pitch. And Cross River and Lead Bank just signed up to prove it works.

What Visa is really selling here is risk reduction. Building stablecoin capabilities in-house means hiring scarce expertise, making technology bets, and navigating regulatory uncertainty alone. Working with Visa means borrowing their learnings from billions in settlement volume and 130+ card programs. For a regional bank or credit union without a crypto strategy team, that's a far more practical path forward.

Our prediction: By end of 2026, instant stablecoin settlement becomes table stakes for banks competing on treasury services. The nimble ones who move first capture the treasury float. The rest will follow once it's normalized - and it will normalize quickly. Settlement speed is becoming a product differentiator.

Visa just gave every bank in America the on-ramp.

🏛️ OCC Grants Conditional National Trust Charters to Five Crypto Firms

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) just granted conditional national trust bank charters to five major crypto infrastructure firms: Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets. Circle and Ripple received approval for new national trust bank charters, while BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets were approved to convert their existing state trust charters to national ones.

Key Points:

• Federal supervision unlocked: A national trust charter means OCC oversight and the regulatory credibility to custody assets for ETFs, corporate treasuries, and institutional clients - without the same patchwork of state licenses required for state-chartered competitors. Some state-level requirements may still apply depending on product and jurisdiction.

• Application surge signals demand: Comptroller Gould disclosed the OCC received 14 de novo charter applications this year - nearly as many as the previous four years combined. From 2011-2024, the agency averaged fewer than four applications per year. The regulatory posture has completely flipped.

• Different charters, different permissions: Paxos's charter includes stablecoin issuance as a permitted activity, though it still needs written OCC non-objection before offering USDG. Ripple's charter, notably, specifies it will not be the issuer for RLUSD under this entity.

• Conditional status matters: These are preliminary approvals. The firms must still satisfy capital, liquidity, governance, and compliance requirements before receiving final charters. Anchorage Digital remains the only crypto firm with a full national trust bank charter today.

• Legal challenges loom: State regulators and banking trade groups have historically opposed OCC trust charters for crypto firms. The Conference of State Bank Supervisors has previously challenged OCC fintech charters in court. Expect continued friction - and potentially litigation - as these applications move toward final approval.

The Tokenized Take:

This is what institutional-grade infrastructure looks like. A national trust charter isn't just a regulatory badge - it's the key that unlocks custody mandates from pension funds, asset managers, and ETF sponsors who require federally supervised counterparties.

Consider the practical implications. Today, a crypto custodian serving institutional clients needs to maintain licenses in dozens of states, each with different examination schedules, capital requirements, and reporting obligations. A national charter consolidates primary oversight into a single federal relationship. That's not just cost savings - it's operational simplicity that makes institutional adoption viable at scale.

The timing here is notable. These approvals arrive just as Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have normalized crypto exposure for traditional allocators, and as tokenized treasuries and money market funds proliferate. The infrastructure bottleneck has been custody - specifically, custody that meets the fiduciary standards institutional investors require. Five firms simultaneously receiving conditional charters suggests the OCC is deliberately building out that layer.

But this won't be smooth. State regulators view these charters as federal overreach. The banking lobby has little appetite for crypto-native competitors gaining bank-equivalent status without bank-equivalent constraints. Conditional approval is the starting line, not the finish.

The next milestone to watch: formal GENIUS Act rulemaking. These OCC charters establish federal supervision for non-bank issuers. GENIUS Act implementation will define exactly how they can operate as stablecoin issuers - reserve requirements, redemption rights, and compliance obligations. The regulatory architecture is coming together piece by piece.

🏛️ SEC Authorizes DTCC to Tokenize US Securities

The SEC just granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) a no-action letter authorizing it to custody and recognize tokenized equities onchain. If you don't know what the DTCC is, that's sort of the point - they're the invisible backbone of US capital markets, processing $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions annually and holding custody of $99 trillion in assets. When you buy Apple stock through Fidelity, the DTCC is what actually moves your shares.

Starting late 2026, they'll move them onchain.

Key Points:

• Not a derivative - the actual security: These tokens carry the same legal rights as traditional shares. Same voting rights. Same dividend entitlements. Same investor protections. Same CUSIP number. This isn't a synthetic wrapper or an IOU from some offshore entity. It's a tokenized entitlement backed by the institution that custodies virtually all US exchange-listed securities.

• Scope and timeline: The authorization covers the Russell 1000, major index ETFs, and US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. The no-action letter runs for three years on pre-approved L1 and L2 networks, with rollout expected H2 2026.

• Scale dwarfs existing alternatives: Robinhood launched tokenized stocks on Arbitrum for EU customers. Ondo has 100+ tokenized equities live. But those are workarounds built outside traditional infrastructure. This is the actual plumbing of US capital markets going onchain.

• Open questions remain: Which blockchain networks get approved? Will DTCC maintain separate cutoff hours for tokenized settlement? Who adopts first? The details will determine how transformative this becomes.

The Tokenized Take:

Three things make this significant: distribution, settlement, and programmability.

Distribution economics shift. Access operates through registered wallets on approved networks for DTC participants and their clients - still a permissioned perimeter, but far more flexible than current infrastructure. Even with DTCC service fees, total costs should remain marginal compared to traditional settlement. Over time, this architecture opens a path where wallet-native fintechs could potentially access equity settlement without building traditional brokerage plumbing.

Settlement risk shrinks. Remember the meme stock saga? Robinhood faced an existential margin call from DTCC's subsidiary NSCC during the GameStop frenzy - a crisis created by the T+2 delay between trade execution and settlement. That event drove the industry toward T+1 in May 2024. Tokenization opens the door to T+0: instant, atomic settlement that could eliminate the counterparty risk that nearly broke a major retail brokerage. Whether DTCC's operational hours actually change remains unclear - but the infrastructure now makes it possible.

Programmable corporate actions unlock savings. Dividend distributions, stock splits, compliance checks, proxy voting - all executable via smart contracts rather than manual reconciliation across intermediaries. For corporations, that's billions in administrative costs reduced.

The stack for 21st century capital markets is becoming visible. Stablecoins move dollars instantly, globally, 24/7. Tokenized T-bills like BlackRock's BUIDL move yield-bearing cash the same way. Now equities join that stack. This follows Nasdaq's September filing to tokenize its entire exchange - the infrastructure layer is moving in concert.

How long before Robinhood, Fidelity, or Schwab makes "tokenized settlement" a checkbox at execution? And when they do, will retail investors even notice - or will blockchain simply become better plumbing they never think about?

That's probably the point.

🚀 Circle Agrees to Acquire Interop Labs to Build the Crosschain Stack

Circle just signed an agreement to acquire the team and intellectual property from Interop Labs - the core contributors behind Axelar Network, one of the leading crosschain messaging protocols in crypto. Sergey Gorbunov, CEO and co-founder of Interop Labs, will join Circle along with his engineering team. The deal is expected to close in early 2026.

Stablecoin issuers are becoming infrastructure companies. And Circle is making that explicit.

Key Points:

• What they're acquiring: Interop Labs is a leading contributor behind Axelar, a framework for secure crosschain messaging that lets tokens and data move between blockchains. The team and their proprietary technology - not the Axelar Network itself - are joining Circle. Axelar continues as an open-source project under the stewardship of Common Prefix.

• Why it matters for CCTP: Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol has processed over $110 billion in cumulative volume and 5.3 million crosschain transfers across 17 blockchains. Axelar's technology expands those capabilities - more chains, arbitrary message passing, cross-chain contract calls. CCTP becomes a more powerful primitive for developers building multi-network applications.

• Why it matters for Arc: Circle's Arc blockchain is designed as an "Economic OS for the internet" - a Layer 1 built specifically for stablecoins and financial applications. Native crosschain interoperability means Arc connects to the broader ecosystem from day one, rather than launching as an isolated network.

• Interoperability consolidation continues: Earlier this year, LayerZero acquired Stargate DAO. Now Circle acquires Axelar's core team. The crosschain infrastructure layer is consolidating as major players recognize that interoperability isn't optional - it's existential.

The Tokenized Take:

The race isn't to issue the most stablecoins. It's to control the infrastructure those stablecoins run on.

Circle faces competition on multiple fronts. Stripe acquired Bridge and is building Tempo. Tether launched Plasma L1 and USDT0 for crosschain transfers. PayPal invested in Stable (Tether-affiliated) for PYUSD infrastructure. M^0, Agora, and Bridge are offering stablecoin-as-a-service with better economics for chains. Meanwhile, bank consortiums in Europe and Japan are building their own stablecoin rails.

In this environment, Circle can't compete on issuance economics alone. The Coinbase revenue-sharing agreement limits how aggressively they can cut deals with new chains. And as Hyperliquid showed when they voted to replace USDC with native USDH, high-volume platforms can now build their own compliant stablecoins and capture the reserve economics themselves.

Circle's response is to pivot from issuer to infrastructure provider. xReserve lets chains launch USDC-backed stablecoins. CCTP connects those stablecoins across networks. Arc provides the optimized settlement layer. And now, the Interop Labs team accelerates all three.

The pattern is clear: Circle is building the picks and shovels for multichain stablecoin finance, regardless of whether chains use native USDC or USDC-backed derivatives.

For enterprise treasury teams, the evaluation criteria are shifting. The question isn't just "which stablecoin?" It's "which infrastructure stack offers seamless multi-chain settlement without liquidity fragmentation?" Circle is betting that connectivity becomes the differentiator - that enterprises will choose infrastructure where value flows effortlessly between Ethereum, Solana, Arc, and whatever chains emerge next.

Expect accelerated Arc and CCTP roadmaps through 2026. Circle just acquired the team to help build them.

📰 Some More News:

🏦 Tokenization, Stablecoins & Finance

• PayPal applies for Utah industrial bank license to support PYUSD and lending operations Read more here

• Standard Chartered, Coinbase expand partnership on digital assets Read more here

• Stripe pushes deeper into crypto; acquires the team behind Valora wallet Read more here

• Klarna and Privy jointly research a consumer crypto wallet Read more here

• Amina Bank partners Ripple for crypto cross-border solution Read more here

• Exodus and MoonPay partner to launch dollar-backed stablecoin for everyday payments in early 2026 Read more here

• Bank of Canada establishes criteria requiring stablecoins to be pegged 1:1 to central bank currencies and backed by high-quality liquid assets Read more here

• Polkadot advances after Coinbase enables USDC integration and direct withdrawals Read more here

• Marshall Islands launches world's first blockchain-based UBI program using USDM1 bond on Stellar Read more here

• Singapore's StraitsX to bring XSGD and XUSD stablecoins to Solana by early 2026 Read more here

• Zepz partners with Fireblocks to scale stablecoin remittances across 130 countries Read more here

• Paxos selects Mesh to enable verified crypto deposits including PYUSD and USDG Read more here

• Stable Sea launches Enterprise API for unified stablecoin operations across fragmented networks Read more here

• Canton Network announces World Liberty Financial's USD1 stablecoin deployment Read more here

• Citi identifies embedded identity and compliance controls as critical for blockchain financial infrastructure Read more here

• Ripple pilots RLUSD on Ethereum L2s including Optimism, Base, Ink, and Unichain via Wormhole partnership Read more here

• SBI Holdings and Startale plan fully regulated yen stablecoin launch in Q2 2026 Read more here

• MetaMask adds native Bitcoin support after 10-month development cycle Read more here

• Lightning Network reaches record 5,637 BTC capacity as major exchanges increase adoption Read more here

• Bhutan commits up to 10,000 BTC toward Gelephu Mindfulness City using collateralized lending strategies Read more here

• European neobank Bunq introduces auto round-up feature converting spare change to crypto Read more here

🤑 Funding and M&A

• Tether leads $8M investment in Speed to expand USDT payments on Bitcoin Lightning Network Read more here

• Tether Submits Proposal to Acquire Juventus Football Club Read more here

• RedotPay raises $107M Series B led by Goodwater Capital, bringing 2025 total funding to $194M Read more here

• Cathie Wood's Ark Invest adds positions in Coinbase, Circle, and BitMine amid falling share prices Read more here

• Nexo secures multi-year Australian Open sponsorship with visibility across Summer of Tennis series Read more here

• HashKey Holdings debuts on Hong Kong exchange following $206M IPO, shares fall 5% on opening day Read more here

💼 Government & Policy

• FDIC releases draft rules enabling banks to issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries under GENIUS Act Read more here

• Spain's CNMV publishes MiCA transition guidance pushing crypto platforms toward "comply or quit" decisions Read more here

• UK FCA opens consultation on crypto rules covering exchanges, staking, lending, and DeFi until February 2026 Read more here

• SEC has dismissed or paused approximately 60% of crypto cases since Trump administration began Read more here

• SEC Chair Paul Atkins warns crypto technology creates "most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented" Read more here

• Aave announces SEC has closed four-year investigation with no enforcement action Read more here

• Senate Banking Committee postpones crypto market structure markup until 2026 Read more here

• Trump signals openness to nominating Democrats to SEC and CFTC, potentially unblocking stalled crypto bill Read more here

• Senator Elizabeth Warren demands DOJ and Treasury probe of PancakeSwap over national security concerns Read more here

• Trump to review potential pardon for convicted Samourai Wallet co-founder Keonne Rodriguez Read more here

• Financial Stability Oversight Council removes crypto from systemic threats assessment following GENIUS Act passage Read more here

• KuCoin becomes exclusive crypto partner for Tomorrowland festivals following MiCA license approval Read more here

• Wyoming crypto bank Custodia files for en banc review challenging Fed's master account denial Read more here

• FTC settlement requires Nomad bridge operator to repay users after $186M 2022 hack Read more here

• Senators introduce SAFE Crypto Act coordinating Treasury, law enforcement, and regulators against fraud Read more here

• UK Treasury sets October 2027 for full cryptoasset regime requiring FCA authorization for intermediaries Read more here

• Coinbase and Robinhood join Trump administration's "U.S. Tech Force" deploying technology specialists to federal agencies Read more here

• Russian lawmaker Anatoly Aksakov states crypto will never be recognized as legal tender in Russia Read more here

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