Tag: Fiserv

Tuesday, 6 October 2026  ·  8 min read

In this issue

The incumbents take over the stablecoin plumbing

At Sibos in Miami, the incumbents’ answer to stablecoins was not “no” but “yes, through us”. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase switched on a shared dollar token. Swift showed its ledger carrying live tokenised deposits. Lloyds settled with Visa in USDC over a weekend. Meanwhile, Australia made the most visible change of the week for consumers: card surcharges are gone.

Opening Sibos on 28 September, Swift said most of the 17 first-mover banks on its blockchain-based ledger have now used it for 24/7 tokenised-deposit payments in five currencies (EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD). It also said more than 100 institutions are live or going live on its consumer payments framework (Swift). A pay-by-alias proof of concept has 14 institutions, including BBVA and DBS (The Fintech Times).

In a seven-day live pilot, Lloyds used USDC bought through Archax to settle $750,000 of payment obligations with Visa. Funds reached Visa in under an hour, including at the weekend (The Block).

Bancomat, Bizum, EPI (Wero), SIBS (MB WAY) and Vipps MobilePay have set up the European Network for Payments, a Madrid-based joint entity in which they are equal shareholders. Together they reach about 130 million users in 13 countries. The rollout starts with cross-border P2P, then moves to e-commerce and point of sale (Vipps MobilePay; SIBS).

On 1 October, Fiserv said its Digital Asset Platform is live. The first use case is Bank of North Dakota’s dollar-backed Roughrider Coin, for payments between North Dakota institutions. VersaBank is the issuer and Fireblocks provides the infrastructure (Fiserv). The pilot starts with four institutions (Dakota News Network).

Visa said about 17% of stablecoin-linked card volume so far in FY26 came from business and commercial programmes. It now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked programmes, and their volume is up nearly 200% year on year (Visa).

Mastercard’s new Advanced B2B Analytics uses AI “acceptance propensity scoring” to show issuers which suppliers are likely to take commercial cards. Absa and Emirates NBD are the first partners (Finextra).

Since 1 October, Australian businesses can no longer surcharge Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or Amex payments. Weekend and public-holiday surcharges are not affected, and the RBA is also lowering interchange caps (business.gov.au).

On 29 September, Japan’s FSA approved a Payment Innovation Project trial of stablecoin settlement for trade transactions. It is led by TradeWaltz with NTT Data and the three megabanks (TradeWaltz).

On 25 September, Bank Indonesia signed a payments MoU with Timor-Leste’s central bank. Cross-border QRIS already links six countries, and foreign visitors had made 17.8 million QRIS transactions worth IDR 6.2 trillion by the end of August (CNA).

The FCA’s authorisation gateway for crypto firms opened on 30 September and closes on 28 February 2027. The regime takes effect on 25 October 2027 (FCA).

The Fed’s proposal for Board-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers, which also covers the Act’s tying prohibition, was published on 29 September. Comments are due by 30 November (Federal Register).

At Sibos, Fed Governor Christopher Waller set out the open questions on agent payments: authentication, liability and fraud. “Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?” he asked (Federal Reserve).

OUSD and the card networks’ shared dollar

On 30 September, Open Standard’s dollar stablecoin, OUSD, went live. On paper it is just another dollar token. Look at who is behind it, though.

The mechanics are simple. OUSD can be minted and redeemed 1:1 for dollars at no cost. It runs on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo. Bridge, a Stripe company, is the issuer, and reserves sit with BlackRock, Lead Bank and others. At launch it was available through BVNK, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform, with Coinbase following on 1 October (Open Standard).

The cast matters more than the mechanics. American Banker reports a consortium of more than 140 members (Open Standard itself cites 200+ partners) and $1 billion of initial liquidity from Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and Coinbase (American Banker).

Why would rivals back the same token? Stablecoins threatened the networks twice over: a dominant issuer could capture the float on reserves, and platforms could settle on-chain and bypass the card rails. A shared, consortium-backed token answers both threats at once. The economics are spread across the members, and the networks stay in the flow as distributors, settlement agents and card issuers. That fits Visa’s own data this week: stablecoin-linked card volume is up nearly 200%, and Visa’s stablecoin settlement has passed a $20 billion annualised run rate (The Block).

For merchants and platforms, the pitch is a dollar token they can mint and redeem at no cost, through partners they already use for card acquiring or payouts, with no need to pick a single crypto-native issuer. For treasurers, it promises settlement outside banking hours without leaving the regulated perimeter the GENIUS Act is now defining.

The obvious loser is the incumbent issuer model. American Banker quotes KeyBanc analysts who see Circle as most negatively affected.

Three things will decide whether OUSD becomes infrastructure: whether the members actually route payouts and settlement through it, how the GENIUS Act rules treat a token whose economics are shared among competitors, and whether banks prefer it to issuing their own tokenised deposits, as Lloyds, Swift’s first movers and Fiserv’s pilot suggest. The likely result is not one winner. It is a world of many monies, in which the networks get paid to move value between all of them.

tokenised deposit

A tokenised deposit is an ordinary commercial bank deposit recorded as a token on a digital ledger. It remains a liability of the issuing bank, with the same regulatory treatment as the deposit behind it. A stablecoin, by contrast, is a claim on a separate issuer backed by reserves. Tokenised deposits are what Swift’s first-mover banks are moving on its new ledger (Swift).

Swift was founded on 3 May 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries. Its first message was sent on 9 May 1977 by Prince Albert of Belgium (Wikipedia). Fifty-three years on, the same co-operative runs a blockchain ledger.