Americans would use stablecoins if they had bank protections, Visa study finds

Visa said the share of Americans willing to use stablecoins for international transfers would rise from 36% to 56% in a hypothetical scenario with bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance. Visa released the findings in its Money Travels 2026 report on Wednesday. Stablecoins do not carry FDIC insurance. Visa stressed that the scenario does not mean such protections exist or are coming. Some 56% of U.S. respondents had never heard of stablecoins. Many respondents who had heard of them wrongly assumed that stablecoins fluctuate like Bitcoin. Interest reached 45% when stablecoins were offered through an existing financial provider. Some 61% of Americans said they would trust a traditional bank with digital currency services. Some 60% said they would trust a global payment network. In Latin America, willingness would rise from 34% to 74% when protections were included. Morning Consult ran the survey from Feb. 24 to March 2. The survey covered 45,445 people across 20 markets. The survey included 2,192 U.S. adults. Some 36% of U.S. remitters said they had encountered a cross-border payment scam. Some 44% said they worry about AI deepfakes impersonating family members. Vira Platonova, global head of Visa Direct, said trust matters most to people who rely on that lifeline. Visa's stablecoin settlement volume reached an annualized rate above $20 billion. Visa's rate was $3.5 billion when Visa began U.S. settlement in USDC on Solana last December. Visa Direct added stablecoin payouts through Zerohash in August. BlackRock put the stablecoin market cap above $300 billion this month. BlackRock reported more than $11 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transaction volume last year. BlackRock believes AI agents will drive the next wave of stablecoin adoption.