Recently, Walmart, Amazon, and even the U.S. government have shown interest in issuing their own stablecoins to enable faster and cheaper transactions.
VISA
Some interpreted this as a threat to Visa . But is it really?
Keep this in mind: even in the most extreme scenario, the financial impact of this change on Visa is... negligible.
Let’s look at the numbers. Walmart and Amazon have combined revenues of over $1.3 trillion. Suppose 30% of that goes through stablecoins (which is extremely optimistic). That’s $390 billion. Let’s say half of that would otherwise go through Visa . That’s $195 billion. Visa earns 0.2% per transaction. So we’re talking about $390 million in revenue.
Do you know how much Visa’s total revenue was over the past 12 months? $37.6 BILLION.
So this whole “threat” amounts to less than 1% of the company’s revenue. A classic nothing burger.
What’s more, even if stablecoins are eventually used at scale, that doesn’t mean they won’t go through payment networks. Transactions still need a medium. And guess who has the expertise, infrastructure, and trust of the market? Visa .
Visa isn’t just sitting on its hands. It’s already building the infrastructure to support these new technologies. Just like Amazon Web Services for the internet and ChatGPT for AI, Visa is positioning itself to be the backbone on which stablecoins will operate. It’s not just participating — it wants to lead the next generation of payments.
In its official announcement on June 5, it presented its comprehensive strategy, fully integrating digital currencies. We’re talking about a company that:
Processed over $16 trillion in transactions in one year
Has over 4.7 billion active cards
And it continues to expand into new markets, signing partnerships with fintechs and governments around the world.
Currently, Visa is trading at a P/E of 34 and a P/FCF of 31.
Not cheap — but it’s always traded at a premium. And not by accident: over the past 10 years, it has delivered a return of +486%, compared to +260% for the S&P.