StraitsX Opens Onboarding for Stablecoin-Backed Visa Card Programs Across More Than 100 Markets
Oct. 28, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network.
StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets under an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. The Singapore-based payment infrastructure provider published integration documentation for the multi-BIN model on 26 October 2026, setting out a route for fintechs to issue stablecoin-backed cards through a single integration rather than assemble separate issuing and settlement arrangements.
The expansion is about access to card infrastructure, not a change in how merchants accept payments. StraitsX handles stablecoin settlement behind the card transaction, while merchants receive fiat through existing Visa rails. Nor does the opening of onboarding mean that every participating provider has launched cards in all the markets covered by the architecture.
What the issuing model provides
StraitsX is licensed as a Major Payment Institution by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It is also an authorized Visa Principal Member and BIN sponsor. A BIN, or bank identification number, identifies a card issuer within a payment network; a multi-BIN architecture gives StraitsX a framework for supporting multiple issuing programs.
The company packages BIN sponsorship, transaction authorization, anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing screening, and fiat clearing into one integration for participating digital payment token providers. That combination is intended to reduce the work involved in arranging card issuing and processing across markets. The documentation opens onboarding across more than 100 markets; it does not, on its own, establish that any particular provider is operating in every one of them.
StraitsX already supplies underlying card-issuing and transaction-settlement infrastructure for consumer products including the OKX Card, RedotPay, Pionex Pay and Chocolate Finance. The expanded architecture offers a way to extend that infrastructure to additional providers, rather than requiring each provider to build the same card-program components independently.
Stablecoin settlement, conventional card acceptance
Under the model, backend settlement uses stablecoins including XSGD, XUSD and USDC. Transactions are converted into the currency used by the card network so merchants receive fiat. For a cardholder, the product can draw on digital-asset infrastructure; for a merchant, acceptance remains a standard card payment. Merchants do not need to hold stablecoins or use a digital-asset wallet to participate.
That distinction matters to the scale of the proposal. Visa’s network reaches 175 million merchants globally, according to the research data, but the figure describes the network’s merchant footprint—not the number of merchants taking stablecoins directly or the number of markets where a new StraitsX-backed card is already live. The expansion seeks to connect stablecoin-backed card programs to established card acceptance without asking merchants to change their payment setup.
It also places several functions in the same issuing stack. StraitsX’s role covers card-program sponsorship and transaction processing as well as the conversion between stablecoin settlement and fiat clearing. Participating fintechs can integrate those functions through StraitsX while presenting their own consumer products, as the existing card examples illustrate.
Growth figures and what comes next
StraitsX recorded a 40-fold year-on-year increase in card gross transaction value from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025. Cards issued across Asia rose 83-fold over the same period. Those figures describe growth in the company’s card business; they do not measure how many of the more than 100 markets have active programs under the newly expanded architecture.
On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly StraitsX card gross transaction volume between $310 million and $438 million through October 2026. The data tracks toward a stated $6 billion annualized card gross transaction value figure, but the monthly range should not be read as confirmation that $6 billion in card transactions has already been completed in a year. The annualized card figure is also separate from StraitsX’s cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume, which covers a broader measure of its activity.
The issuing expansion sits alongside investment in the conversion infrastructure behind it. StraitsX’s parent, Fazz, secured $10 million in strategic funding in October 2025, backed by NTT DOCOMO Ventures, for scaling fiat-to-stablecoin conversion infrastructure.
StraitsX and Visa have scheduled live agentic-payment demonstrations at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2026. The demonstrations are set to show stablecoin-backed card automation developed under StraitsX’s AgentiX Playground. They represent a planned next step, while the immediate development is the opening of provider onboarding for the expanded issuing architecture.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.