News linked to both this project and an event.
According to the official announcement, Bitget’s stock contracts are now available for 11 underlying assets, including BUD (Anheuser-Busch InBev), NKE (Nike), KO (Coca-Cola), ABNB (Airbnb), MAR (Marriott International), and V (Visa), spanning sectors related to major sporting events—such as sports & entertainment, travel & transportation, and consumer brands. These contracts support up to 20x leverage. For more details, please visit Bitget’s official platform.
payments giant Visa has announced a partnership with Brale to explore the feasibility of using Brale’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin, SBC, for institutional payment settlements on the Canton Network. This proof of concept aims to assess how privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure can support faster and programmable settlement, while helping financial institutions and payment companies control the visibility of sensitive transaction data. (Businesswire)
According to an official announcement, Tether has partnered with digital banking and investment platform Fasset to launch the world’s first gold-backed Visa card.
Global payment networks Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are close to launching a new stablecoin platform.According to sources familiar with the matter, U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is also exploring the possibility of participating in this stablecoin platform. Meanwhile, Binance, Coinbase, Stripe, and Visa have all declined to comment, and Mastercard did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Additionally, the revenue-sharing agreement between Coinbase and Circle Internet is set to expire and be renewed in August of this year, with the current market cap of USDC reaching $76 billion. (CoinDesk)
According to a report by Caixin, Global Payments, a global payment technology and software company, released its “Global Payments Report 2026,” which states that digital wallets now account for over half of global online transaction value and one-third of offline transaction value. Digital wallets offer flexible integration of diverse payment methods—including cryptocurrencies—and the report forecasts that direct cryptocurrency payments will be the fastest-growing online payment method, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16% between 2025 and 2030. This implies that by 2030, e-commerce transactions conducted directly via cryptocurrency could represent 0.28% of global e-commerce transaction value—nearly $31 billion. However, despite the global cryptocurrency market capitalization nearing $3.2 trillion as of end-2025, cryptocurrency remains a relatively marginal payment method for consumer-to-merchant transactions. Reports from MRC and Visa indicate that only 10% of merchants worldwide directly accept cryptocurrency payments. In 2025, cryptocurrency accounted for just 0.19%—approximately $15 billion—of global e-commerce transaction value.
: An opinion piece published in the French media *Le Monde* points out that France may have only about 6 months to seize the new wave of industrial revolution led by "agentic AI". Otherwise, it risks being marginalized in the global digital financial system. Several French crypto industry insiders argue that online transactions driven by AI agents are growing rapidly, with most settlements already completed via stablecoins. According to the *State of Crypto* report by Andreessen Horowitz, the annual transaction volume of stablecoins has reached approximately $46 trillion, nearly three times that of Visa and 20 times that of PayPal, establishing them as a key infrastructure in the global payment system.The article further points out that the x402 standard, promoted by Coinbase and adopted by Cloudflare, Google, and Visa, already supports AI agents in automatically completing payments via stablecoins, with cumulative transactions exceeding 119 million to date.However, in terms of the tax system, France's current provisions are criticized as being unable to adapt to this trend. The complex tax treatment between stablecoin exchanges and fiat withdrawals is believed to discourage the flow of funds back into the banking system, causing a large volume of digital asset transactions to remain within the stablecoin ecosystem for extended periods. As AI agents and stablecoin payments gradually converge, the global financial infrastructure is being restructured. If France fails to promptly adjust its regulatory and tax framework, it may miss out on the dividends of this new wave of the digital economy.
fintech company Revolut has announced the launch of its first physical crypto debit card, featuring a Dogecoin theme and an LED display that lights up when users tap to pay.The card is usable at merchants that accept Visa and Mastercard, and will initially be rolled out in the UK and the European Economic Area.This launch comes amid sustained growth in crypto card usage. Platforms such as Crypto.com, Coinbase, and Binance are all expanding their crypto card services, while Gemini also regards its credit card business as a key source of revenue growth. Data shows that daily transaction volumes for crypto cards have repeatedly exceeded 100,000 in recent times, indicating that payment scenarios within the industry are continuing to expand.
a16z Crypto published a post explaining its investment rationale for Arc, noting that stablecoins have evolved from crypto-native trading tools into the foundational layer of global financial infrastructure—and are now driving blockchain’s evolution from “application-layer finance” to a “system-level economic operating system.” Last year, stablecoin transaction volume reached approximately $9 trillion—placing it on par with global payment networks such as Visa and PayPal. The total supply of USD-pegged stablecoins has surpassed $270 billion. Cross-border payments, B2B settlements, and foreign exchange transactions are emerging as core use cases for stablecoins, positioning them increasingly as the “global capital flow upgrade layer.” a16z Crypto stated that existing blockchain infrastructure remains primarily geared toward crypto-native users and individual developers, lacking native support for large-scale institutional requirements. Its participation in building the ARC token ecosystem stems from the expectation that, as global finance gradually migrates on-chain, only a select few public blockchains will be capable of serving as the foundational bedrock for “on-chain economic systems.”
Josh Swihart, Founder and CEO of the Zcash Open Development Lab, announced at Consensus 2026 in Miami that Zcash plans to launch a quantum-resilient wallet within one month and achieve full post-quantum readiness within the next 12 to 18 months, while also advancing scalability efforts to reach Visa- and Mastercard-level throughput. Driven by Multicoin Capital’s disclosure of a large investment and growing momentum around privacy narratives, ZEC has surged over 110% in the past 30 days. Additionally, following integration with Near Intents, users can now cross-chain swap BTC, SOL, USDC, and other assets for shielded ZEC; since launch, these channels have processed approximately $600 million to $700 million in volume, and the shielded pool currently accounts for roughly 30% of the circulating ZEC supply.
According to Forbes, Bitcoin mining company GoMining plans to launch GoBTC—a Bitcoin-native payment protocol built on its own block production—at the Consensus conference. The protocol enables instant user authorization and settlement on the Bitcoin mainnet within hours, charging merchants a fee of just 0.2%, which is an order of magnitude lower than Visa’s and Mastercard’s 1.5%–3.5% fees.
stablecoin infrastructure startup Rain is now valued at $1.95 billion and has announced a partnership with payment giant Mastercard to issue credit and prepaid cards, while also exploring the use of stablecoins for payment settlements. Previously, Rain primarily relied on the Visa network for its card products. This collaboration with Mastercard marks its entry into a "dual-card network" strategy, further expanding its institutional client market. Rain stated that the partnership will focus on serving large institutional clients already deeply integrated with a single payment network, enabling them to introduce stablecoin settlement capabilities without altering their existing payment systems.Meanwhile, the application of stablecoins continues to expand across the industry, with institutions such as Stripe and Coinbase actively promoting the integration of stablecoin payments and settlements. This indicates that the convergence of traditional finance and crypto payment infrastructure is accelerating. Analysts suggest that as regulatory frameworks gradually become clearer, stablecoins are rapidly transitioning from trading tools to enterprise payment and cross-border settlement infrastructure. (Fortune)
data from Memento Research shows the monthly spending volume of crypto payment cards has risen to $600 million, a six-fold increase from a year ago. Cumulative on-chain transaction volume has reached $7.2 billion, with a total of 24 million transactions completed, involving 1.36 million wallet addresses. Among them:1. 62.5% of transactions are settled using Tether (USDT), indicating that stablecoins are gradually becoming the underlying infrastructure for consumer payments;2. Approximately 90% of transactions are completed via the Visa network;3. On-chain data also shows that the Solana ecosystem contributed about $348 million in transaction volume, while Jupiter’s Jupiter Global saw a month-over-month growth of 660%.
According to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, payment giant Visa has announced the launch of its global Visa Agentic Ready program in Hong Kong. Built upon Visa’s core network and integrated with tokenization technology, identity verification, risk management, and authorization mechanisms, the program supports institutions in implementing AI agent-based payments. The first group of participating institutions includes Bank of China (Hong Kong), DBS Bank (Hong Kong), Hang Seng Bank, HSBC Hong Kong, Reap, Standard Chartered Hong Kong, and ZA Bank.
According to The Block, Oobit—a wallet startup backed by Tether—has launched virtual “Agent Cards,” enterprise expense cards powered by Visa and designed for AI agents. These cards enable AI bots to make online purchases directly using their USDT balances, eliminating the need to convert to fiat currency or obtain manual, per-transaction approval. Each agent card features individual spending limits, category-level expenditure controls, and per-transaction or per-merchant caps. Every transaction automatically generates a human-readable record and supports integration with payment platforms such as Stripe for handling subscription billing and vendor payments.
According to Fortune, Tempo—a blockchain project backed by Stripe and Paradigm—has launched “Stablecoin Advisory” services to support enterprises and financial institutions in adopting stablecoins, including identifying suitable use cases and deploying engineers to assist with stablecoin integration. The report states that DoorDash is collaborating with Tempo to explore paying delivery personnel in stablecoins; Stripe, Coastal Community Bank, and ARQ are also building stablecoin infrastructure on Tempo’s platform, while Visa, OnePay, Felix, Fifth Third Bank, and Howard Hughes Holdings are integrating their payment operations with Tempo.
Odaily News The x402 protocol, incubated by Coinbase, has announced the launch of a unified platform called Agent.market, positioned as an "AI Agent App Store" for centrally showcasing and integrating various tools and services built on the protocol. According to the introduction, Agent.market already covers seven major categories at launch: inference, data, media, search, social, infrastructure, and trading. It integrates service providers including OpenAI, Bloomberg, CoinGecko, LinkedIn, X, and AWS Lambda, and supports permissionless integration.Erik Reppel, Engineering Lead at Coinbase Developer Platform, stated that the platform is essentially "an app store for agents." Currently, there are approximately 69,000 active agents on the x402 network, which have cumulatively completed over 165 million transactions, with a transaction volume reaching $50 million. Most services on Agent.market adopt a pay-per-use model, with some charging an "agentic premium" for AI agents. However, costs can be reduced through subscriptions in high-frequency usage scenarios. Meanwhile, the "agent economy" based on x402 is lowering customer acquisition and integration costs for businesses, unlocking previously constrained demand due to API keys, subscriptions, and micro-payment mechanisms.The x402 protocol is named after the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, enabling websites, APIs, and AI agents to conduct instant micropayments via blockchain and traditional payment channels. The protocol is governed as an open standard by the x402 Foundation under the Linux Foundation and has received support from over 20 technology and crypto institutions including Cloudflare, Stripe, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Visa. (The Block)
According to Fortune, payment giant American Express announced this week the launch of an agent commerce developer toolkit and pledged transaction protection for errors made by AI agents registered on its network. Agent commerce refers to payments or financial activities conducted on behalf of users by AI agents; while current applications remain limited, the concept has already drawn attention from major payment providers. American Express stated that its existing dispute resolution mechanisms can effectively address transaction risks introduced by AI agents and that it mitigates customer disputes and chargebacks by issuing payment credentials and implementing identity verification measures exclusively for verified agents. Several other payment companies—including Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe—have recently rolled out related infrastructure. American Express also revealed it is exploring the use of stablecoins in settlement but did not disclose specific plans.
According to The Block, Visa, Stripe, and Zodia Custody—a digital asset custody firm backed by Standard Chartered Bank—have become the first validators on the Tempo payment blockchain. Tempo is an Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for high-throughput payments and stablecoin settlement, primarily targeting large institutions. Validators are responsible for verifying, ordering, and finalizing on-chain transactions, and are typically mature organizations with global operational capabilities. Tempo was incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, launched its private testnet in September 2025, and closed a $500 million Series A funding round in October at a valuation of approximately $5 billion. Recently, Tempo introduced its “Agent Payments” protocol—executed by AI agents—and has attracted infrastructure integrations including RedStone.
The Kansas City Federal Reserve’s latest analysis indicates that stablecoins currently serve primarily as tools for cryptocurrency trading and liquidity provision within the financial ecosystem, rather than as mainstream payment instruments. According to the report, approximately 49% of stablecoin supply supports trading liquidity on centralized exchanges, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and broader crypto infrastructure; 29% is used for wallet-to-wallet transfers or internal fund operations; and 21% remains idle—with less than 1% actually deployed for real-world payments. The report notes that, as natively crypto-designed instruments, stablecoins face constraints in cross-chain interoperability and integration with traditional financial systems, hindering their large-scale adoption for payments. Although payment processors such as Mastercard and Visa announced support for related technologies in 2026, stablecoin-based payment use cases remain in their infancy. Future development hinges on resolving critical challenges including interoperability, regulatory compliance, and identity verification.
According to CoinTelegraph, Visa officially announced the launch of its “Intelligent Commerce Connect” platform this Wednesday, positioning it as a universal entry point for AI agent builders and merchants entering AI-driven commerce. The platform enables secure payment initiation, tokenization, spend controls, and identity verification through a single integration with Visa’s Acceptance Platform. It supports both Visa and non-Visa card payments and is compatible with leading AI agent protocols. The platform is currently in pilot phase and is scheduled for full rollout later in 2026.