[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Visa and Mastercard, the two biggest global credit card networks, are both investing aggressively in stablecoins, citing them as a new growth engine.

But there is a significant difference between the two companies in how they approach stablecoins.

Fintech and payments expert Tom Noyes (톰 노예스) said the two companies' stablecoin tactics are close to opposites. Mastercard wants to acquire and directly own infrastructure, while Visa is focused on building a partner network.

The difference can be summed up as centralised ownership versus decentralised innovation.

Mastercard said in April 2026 it would acquire stablecoin B2B payments infrastructure firm BVNK for $1.8 billion. BVNK is a B2B platform that enables companies to exchange stablecoins and fiat currencies, convert currencies and store them. As of the acquisition announcement, BVNK's annual stablecoin payments processing volume exceeded $30 billion.

Mastercard's strategy around the BVNK acquisition has three main elements. The first is to capture new payment flows such as B2B cross-border payments, global payouts, remittances and wallet funding that existing card networks have not handled efficiently.

The second is to secure a new revenue source beyond value-added services (VAS), which account for about 40 percent of total revenue.

The third is to get ahead in the autonomous payments market led by AI agents. Noyes said, "If Mastercard combines Agent Pay that it launched with BVNK, it can process agent-led payments directly without partners."

Visa chose the opposite direction. Rather than directly owning stablecoin infrastructure, it appears focused on growing the ecosystem through a partner network. Visa's stablecoin-linked card transaction volume in the second quarter of 2026 rose by almost 200 percent from a year earlier. Visa operates more than 160 stablecoin card programmes worldwide.

Noyes said, "Stablecoin settlement volume increased from an annualised $4.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026 to $7.0 billion in the second quarter. These figures were achieved without directly owning stablecoin infrastructure." He added, "Visa is enabling partners such as Rain, Reap and Bridge to connect to the Visa network with their own stablecoin infrastructure and customer relationships."

Cooperation with Stripe and with Tempo, a layer-1 blockchain led by Stripe, also stands out. Stripe already provides stablecoin payout services in 160 countries, and Visa is playing the role of the settlement layer within that ecosystem.

The tactics of Visa and Mastercard each have their own strengths.

Mastercard's centralised strategy allows it to control technology, secure the full revenue stream and provide a single point of contact to corporate customers. But it also has structural limits, including a single investor, a single roadmap and a single point of failure.

Visa's model is decentralised. When Visa provides the network rails, partners invest in their own stablecoin capabilities, customers and regions. Stripe supports a developer platform, Tempo supports machine payments, and Rain and Reap cover specific cross-border routes. Noyes said, "Visa does not need to build everything itself. Every new use case solved by partners becomes a new payment flow that passes through the Visa network."

Noyes said Visa's approach would be relatively advantageous. He said, "Visa's distributed innovation model will generate more value-added services revenue per unit of stablecoin transaction volume than Mastercard's centralised platform," adding, "because more independent entities invest in use cases that drive volume, distribution and localisation."