Stablecoin Payments Hit $482 Billion Through September While Supply Stays Flat at $305 Billion, Allium Says

Since Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase backed the launch of the Open USD stablecoin with more than $1 billion in opening liquidity, the payment companies have kept shipping. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Marqeta/Coinbase each announced stablecoin products in mid-October, and a new data set from Allium, reported Oct. 18, shows how much activity they are chasing.

Usage up, supply flat

Allium's State of Stablecoins and Payments, Q3 2026 puts stablecoin payment volume at $482 billion from January through September, up 45% from the same period a year earlier. September set a monthly record at $72 billion. The third quarter alone grew 51% year over year.

Total supply barely moved. It rose 0.4% to $305 billion as of Sept. 30.

Transaction counts grew faster than dollars. Payments climbed 71% to 1.04 billion, while the average payment fell from $544 to $462. Allium points to business transactions, payroll and cross-border payments as major use cases. Payments made by AI agents doubled to 68.3 million in the third quarter.

Allium also reports that card spending funded by stablecoins grew roughly tenfold to $3.9 billion in the third quarter.

The big issuers shrank

Tether, Circle and Ethena all saw supply contract in 2026, according to Allium. Smaller issuers added a net $6.9 billion, which kept the overall total roughly level.

That is the context for the Open USD consortium. The card networks and their partners are building their own token while the largest incumbents lose supply.

Allium says Visa has launched more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs worldwide, with payment volume on them up nearly 200% year over year. Visa's annualized run rate for stablecoin settlements has passed $20 billion.

What shipped this week

Visa. Visa moved USDC prefunding for Visa Direct from pilot to commercial production, with Cambridge, Mass.-based Inyo Global as its first enabler. Eligible payment businesses can fund cross-border payouts in USDC in near real time instead of waiting solely on conventional funding windows. Vira Platonova, Visa Direct's global head, said in a statement: "The next chapter for stablecoins is adoption."

The scope is narrower than it sounds. This is prefunding of payouts, not a claim that every Visa Direct recipient is paid in USDC. Availability depends on eligibility and geography, and costs for the new service were not immediately available.

Mastercard. Mastercard and BVNK launched the Global Money Platform on Oct. 15. It is a single-API service that lets banks, fintechs and enterprises hold fiat and stablecoin accounts side by side, convert between them in real time, attach cards to stablecoin balances and pay out to local bank accounts through Mastercard Move. Nuvei, Marqeta, Ontop, Beem and Almond FinTech are named as initial integrators.

Mastercard closed its $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK in August. It says Move reaches more than 17 billion endpoints. Coverage of more than 40 currencies across 200-plus countries is expected in 2027, not today.

Stripe. Under its Oct. 16 update, Stripe launched stablecoin card issuing in 27 EU countries, taking the product to more than 65 countries. Cards can draw on custodial or noncustodial wallets or a Stripe financial account. Stripe also expanded Global Payouts so businesses can send instant stablecoin payouts to recipients in 160 markets. Stripe plans card-issuing coverage in 100 countries by the end of 2026, a target rather than the current footprint.

Marqeta and Coinbase. Marqeta said it will work with Coinbase on cards that let customers of Marqeta's enterprise clients spend stablecoin balances. Coinbase handles custody and conversion to fiat, its Base blockchain handles settlement, and Marqeta runs issuance and processing. Anthony Peculic, Marqeta's chief strategy officer, said Coinbase "brings scale and breadth of infrastructure to provide for the needs of our enterprise customers."

Doubts on the checkout side

Not everyone thinks the cards solve the hard part. Cliff Gray, principal at Gray Consulting Ventures, told Digital Transactions that the real fight against Visa is convincing consumers a stablecoin-backed card is as easy to use as a Visa card. He added that "the longstanding challenge at the merchant is the investment required to accept such payment methods."

Aaron McPherson of AFM Consulting read Marqeta's move as defensive. In his view it protects Marqeta's position against crypto-native firms that might sell their own card-issuing platforms. He also argued a Visa or Mastercard network affiliation would be more useful than a proprietary card, which "wouldn't add much value beyond trading the stablecoins directly."

Outside the U.S., the open questions are about cost and licensing. CryptoTicker's analysis of the Mastercard platform says the announcement leaves fees and MiCA authorisation unanswered for German users.

What to watch

Allium lists three things to track. One is whether the average payment keeps shrinking. Another is whether AI-agent transactions keep doubling. The third is whether smaller issuers can hold their gains once Tether, Circle and Ethena respond.

The announcements also mix live products with planned ones. Mastercard's full currency and country coverage is a 2027 target, and Stripe's 100-country card-issuing goal is a year-end target, not today's footprint.