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.
Mastercard and Visa are extending stablecoin technology into the systems that settle card payments between financial institutions, while leaving the consumer checkout experience largely unchanged. Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK in August 2026 and has expanded its network’s settlement options to include regulated stablecoins. Visa, meanwhile, is working with Stripe-owned Bridge and Lead Bank on on-chain settlement for card programs. The shift became more concrete in September, when SoFi Bank moved its credit and debit card issuing portfolio to live settlement using its bank-issued SoFiUSD. That portfolio represents more than $25 billion in annualized card volume, a measure distinct from the value settled in stablecoins. Visa separately reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate exceeding $25 billion in October. The networks’ initiatives target the back-end movement and reconciliation of funds, including periods when traditional bank settlement rails are unavailable; they do not require merchants to accept cryptocurrency.
The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a bridge connecting tokenised-asset platforms to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services for wholesale settlement in central bank money. The arrangement enables atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement, in which an asset and its payment move together. It does not yet make wholesale settlement available around the clock: Pontes depends on T2 operating hours and requires tokenised central bank money balances to be defunded at the end of the day. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone says the Eurosystem plans to extend Pontes operating hours substantially by mid-2027 and reach 24/7/365 availability in 2028. Separately, the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agorá has tested cross-border payments using a shared programmable ledger that brings tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves into a single settlement process. Both initiatives address delays and liquidity demands in wholesale payments, but neither makes continuous, cross-border settlement available today.
Project Agorá’s real-value testing settled 30 live, multi-currency transactions worth approximately CHF 800,000, with atomic settlement averaging about 80 seconds. The tests involved 28 commercial institutions and five central banks. The result shows how tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves could support faster cross-border settlement, though it does not establish that settlement latency has been eliminated. The project’s prototype found that tokenisation did not change the legal character or regulatory obligations of deposits and reserves. Its design also let participating institutions conduct compliance checks concurrently. Seven more commercial banks joined in September 2026, taking private-sector participation to nearly 50 institutions. At Sibos in October, banking executives described the testing pipeline as a step towards production trials alongside the European Central Bank’s Pontes platform. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York did not participate in the live test transactions, an important qualification for the US dollar tests.
Ripple’s final federal trust bank charter, a Moody’s investment-grade rating for RLUSD and a planned expansion of the stablecoin’s availability on Coinbase have strengthened its position as a regulated digital dollar. Coinbase said Global Exchange access, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow its initial retail and prime rollout. Moody’s assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the first investment-grade rating it has given a stablecoin. The distinctions behind those developments matter. Ripple National Trust Bank manages RLUSD’s reserve collateral, but the legal issuer remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York-regulated Ripple subsidiary. The national trust bank is uninsured and cannot take commercial retail deposits or extend credit. Moody’s also noted that holders do not currently own the underlying reserves directly and that statutory bankruptcy protections depend on implementation of the GENIUS Act, whose rules take effect in January 2027.
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.