Reap and Visa said September 23 they are expanding stablecoin-linked Visa card programs to more than 100 markets, taking Reap’s card-issuing infrastructure beyond its existing base in Asia and Latin America into EMEA and Africa. Reap becomes the first Asia-based fintech to partner with Visa on stablecoin credit card issuing at that scale, according to Reap’s announcement. Visa said stablecoin-linked card programs are growing at a 106% compound annual rate, compared with 5% for peer-to-peer payments, and that its own stablecoin settlement volume now runs at a $20 billion annualized rate, up 15 times year over year across more than 160 stablecoin card programs and 175 million Visa-accepting locations.
“We are excited that Visa is building the stablecoin card category with us in this landmark collaboration from Asia Pacific,” said Daren Guo, Reap’s co-founder. The two companies also said they will explore agentic commerce capabilities, including letting AI agents execute authenticated payments within limits a user sets.
The expansion adds a card-issuing layer to a settlement trend already visible elsewhere: stablecoin cards have already reached remittance corridors, and banks have separately begun validating the stablecoin rails they rely on for settlement. What is new here is the geography: Reap’s move into EMEA and Africa signals that stablecoin card issuing is no longer concentrated in the markets that adopted crypto earliest, but is following ordinary card-network expansion logic instead.
Stephen Karpin, Visa’s president for Asia Pacific, framed the deal as evidence the category has matured past early adopters: “Stablecoin-linked card programs are entering a new stage and phase of scale and adoption. The collaboration with Reap reflects the strong momentum we are seeing across the payments ecosystem.” For a card issuer, going from two regions to more than 100 markets in one partnership is a scale jump that would have taken years through bilateral bank deals under the old correspondent-banking model. That compression in time-to-market, more than the stablecoin label itself, is the part worth watching as other issuers weigh whether to follow the same route.
Source: Reap
