Visa and Anchorage Digital announced Thursday that Visa and eligible partners can settle VisaNet obligations using USDPT, Western Union’s dollar stablecoin. The arrangement gives USDPT native settlement status on Visa’s network and makes it the first stablecoin issued by Anchorage’s bank to receive that status, tying the remittance company’s token push directly into Visa’s card-settlement infrastructure.

USDPT is issued and held by Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., which Anchorage describes as the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States. The bank is supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to Anchorage’s announcement.

Visa and Anchorage also established a framework to explore support for additional stablecoins issued by Anchorage following the USDPT launch. From here, the threads to follow are which Anchorage-issued tokens gain support next and how far Western Union’s rollout travels beyond its first two markets.

“As stablecoin payments grow, we’re focused on providing more choice for our partners in how they settle with Visa,” said Dan Roesbery, Visa’s vice president of global crypto partnerships and GTM. USDPT, he added, gives partners “another trusted, institution-grade option backed by a federally chartered bank.”

“Stablecoins have made money move faster, but speed alone won’t bring institutions onchain. They need a regulated institution behind the money,” said Nathan McCauley, Anchorage’s co-founder and CEO.

Anchorage is seeking to operate as an institutional settlement bank for stablecoins. In addition to issuing tokens, it operates Atlas, a counterparty network that provides off-exchange settlement, collateral management and cross-border transfers.

USDPT launched on Solana in May

USDPT launched on Solana in May. Western Union initially introduced the token in the Philippines and Bolivia and plans to support 24/7 settlement across more than 200 countries.

Cryptopolitan reported in October that Noah had been selected by Western Union to operate Receiver Redirect, a payout service that sends transfers as USDPT. According to DeFiLlama, approximately $18 million of the token was circulating.

Other stablecoins on Anchorage’s issuance roster include USAT for Tether, USDGO for OSL Group, USDtb for Ethena Labs, fUSD for Falcon Finance and ZLUSD for Zelle. Anchorage says each is backed 100% by U.S. dollars and cash equivalents and is redeemable at a 1:1 ratio. The roster illustrates Anchorage’s issuance model, in which the bank issues dollar tokens on behalf of other firms.

Visa said in September that its annualized stablecoin settlement run rate had exceeded $20 billion, more than 15 times the level a year earlier. The company expanded its pilot to nine blockchains in April, when the annualized run rate was $7 billion. Visa now settles on networks including Base, Canton, Monad and Tempo.

Total stablecoin supply stood at approximately $289 billion, down from a peak of about $313 billion in May. Circle’s USDC accounted for approximately $70 billion, while Tether’s USDT accounted for about $176 billion. USDPT’s roughly $18 million in circulation remains a small fraction of that total.

Anchorage was founded in San Francisco in 2017. Its investors include Visa, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The company was valued at more than $3 billion in a Series D funding round. Visa’s investment in Anchorage now sits alongside its use of an Anchorage-issued token on its own settlement network.

Source: Cryptopolitan.