Visa and Mesh Unlock Crypto Spending Across 175 Million Merchant Locations Worldwide

Key Takeaways:

• Visa is partnering with Mesh to provide crypto and stablecoin payments at over 175 million merchant locations.
• The users will have a choice to directly pay from the wallet without having to cash out or get a separate crypto card.
• While merchants remain on Visa’s current payment infrastructure, Mesh will be responsible for funding, conversation, enrollment, and compliance.

Visa and Mesh are building a new payment bridge designed to make digital assets usable at everyday checkout. Announced on October 19, the partnership will connect crypto and stablecoin balances held in participating wallets with Visa’s global acceptance network.

Visa Opens Its 175 Million Merchant Network to Crypto Wallets

The partnership benefits from a distribution network of over 175 million Visa merchant locations in more than 200 countries and territories.

The aim for the Mesh integration is to permit the customers to make transactions without transferring crypto to a bank account or loading money onto a dedicated crypto card.

There will be a Visa payment credential working as a sort of back-end. The users will be able to use regular contactless terminals or purchase online while Mesh will handle the funding of the payment and the conversion of supported crypto, stablecoin or fiat holdings, if needed.

The merchants will get a standard payment via the existing standard infrastructure of Visa. This signifies that enterprises won’t need to buy dedicated crypto payment equipment and refit their checkout procedures.

Greetings from the party that already has more than 200 enterprises plugged into its network of digital wallets, exchanges, and financial services, Mesh said.

Read More: Arc Mainnet Goes Live With 190+ Partners, BlackRock and Visa Back New Network

Crypto Spending Still Lags Behind Ownership

The partnership is focussing on a major disconnect between the adoption of cryptocurrencies and usage of products on them.

The research cited by Mesh estimates that by June 2026, global ownership of cryptocurrencies will hit 774 million people. However, crypto card usage had only reached about a $1.5 billion monthly total by late 2025.

This dry spell underscores one of crypto payments’ biggest hurdles: users can have a tonne of digital assets but lack the ease of using them for normal transactions.

Bam Azizi, the CEO and co-founder of Mesh, said the problem was essentially a “last-mile issue”, that people shouldn’t have to get an additional card or an account to use the funds that they already have.

Mesh Handles Conversion, KYC and Payment Infrastructure

Participants from participating platforms will be able to integrate on top of Mesh and not develop their own card issuing and payment systems.

Mesh will assume the role of a program manager, overseeing onboarding of users, Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, transaction funding and converting assets between supported ones. The company has already partnered with several platforms such as Tools for Humanity, Kalshi, KAST, Majority and Felix Pago.

Instead of having to create an alternative system for payments, Visa was able to give Mesh access to a global payment ecosystem through payment volume, which amounted to $14.2 trillion during fiscal 2025.

The partnership hasn’t yet announced its plans for which wallets will be available first, which kind of devices it will support, or when consumers will be able to access them.

Read More: MoneyGram Launches Stablecoin Card in Colombia, Bringing Crypto Payments to 60M Users

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