Visa Direct stablecoin prefunding is out of pilot. On October 15, 2026, Visa announced that the Visa Direct stablecoin capabilities it has tested since 2025 are moving into commercial deployment. The first live route runs through Inyo Global, a Visa Direct processor. Businesses on Inyo’s platform can now prefund cross-border payouts through Visa Direct with USDC in near real time, rather than relying only on traditional funding windows.
Visa Direct is Visa’s real-time payouts platform. The change sits on the funding side: the stablecoin pays for the payouts, and the recipient is not necessarily paid in a token.
What prefunding means here
A business that sends payouts through Visa Direct has to put money in first. The payouts then draw on that balance. With fiat, topping it up depends on bank transfers, which follow banking hours and cut-off times.
Visa’s Visa Direct product blog of February 12, 2026 describes the mechanism during the pilot. Eligible clients prefund their Visa Direct virtual accounts with USDC or PayPal USD (PYUSD). Once the coins arrive, Visa converts them into fiat and records a US dollar balance that is available almost at once for payouts. Visa listed the expected gains as top-ups on weekends or after cut-offs, shorter funding windows and less idle capital.
The October 15 release names USDC for the Inyo rollout. It does not mention PYUSD.
Inyo Global goes first
Visa calls Inyo Global “the first enabler” of the production service. According to the release, Inyo serves money transmitters, fintechs, banks and payment businesses. Through one connection, its platform lets them onboard users, run fraud and compliance checks, accept payments and send domestic and international payouts to more than 180 countries through Visa Direct.
Inyo’s co-founder and chief product and technology officer, Robson Dantas, said in the release that the option is available around the clock and runs through the same Inyo APIs its clients already use. Visa says availability varies by eligibility and geography. It does not name other enablers, fees, volumes or the blockchains used to deliver the USDC.
From pilot to production
Visa first described the prefunding pilot at Sibos on September 30, 2025. It aimed the pilot at banks, remitters and other financial institutions, said Visa would treat stablecoins received as “money in the bank” for payouts, and expected limited availability by April 2026. On November 12, 2025, Visa added a second pilot that runs the other way: businesses fund payouts in fiat and recipients can choose to receive USD-backed stablecoins such as USDC in their wallets.
The new release says the pilots showed how stablecoins could support cross-border funding, liquidity management and global money movement for eligible clients, and that those capabilities are now moving into commercial operations. The one production service it names is prefunding through Inyo; it does not say when recipient payouts in stablecoins will be broadly available.
For what USDC is and how it is redeemed, see its stablecoin list entry and our guide to stablecoin redemption. Our explainer on the full cost of a cross-border stablecoin payment breaks down the other legs of a payout.
