Stablecoins' Trust Issues? Americans Would Swipe Right If Banks Came Along 💳

Americans might warm to stablecoins if they came bundled with bank-level protections, according to Visa's Money Travels 2026 report released Wednesday. The payments giant found that willingness to use stablecoins for international transfers jumped from 36% to 56% under a hypothetical scenario offering bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, and rose to 45% when the assets were issued through an existing financial provider.

Awareness remains the chief obstacle. Some 56% of U.S. respondents had never heard of stablecoins, and many who had wrongly assumed they fluctuate like $BTC. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable asset, usually the U.S. dollar, and they do not carry FDIC insurance. Visa stressed that its scenario does not suggest such protections exist or are imminent. About six in 10 Americans said they would trust a traditional bank (61%) or a global payment network (60%) with digital currency services.

The trend extends beyond the United States. In Latin America, willingness to use stablecoins more than doubled from 34% to 74% with bank-like protections in place. Morning Consult ran the survey from Feb. 24 to March 2, polling 45,445 people across 20 markets, including 2,192 U.S. adults. "Our research shows what matters most to those who rely on that lifeline: trust," said Vira Platonova, global head of Visa Direct. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 64%, said trust depends more on who offers a payment method than on the technology itself.

Scams are a parallel concern. Some 36% of U.S. remitters said they had encountered a cross-border payment scam, and 44% worry about AI deepfakes impersonating family members. The survey arrives as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act awaits finalized rules from key U.S. financial agencies ahead of its effective date, expected in January 2027. Under GENIUS, U.S. stablecoins are still not expected to have FDIC insurance or explicit fraud protection, but will include guidelines aimed at addressing illicit activities.

Visa has been building stablecoin rails for years. Its stablecoin settlement volume hit an annualized rate above $20 billion, up from a $3.5 billion run rate when it began U.S. settlement in USDC on Solana last December, and Visa Direct added stablecoin payouts through Zerohash in August. BlackRock put stablecoins' market cap above $300 billion this month, with more than $11 trillion in adjusted transaction volume last year. U.S. dollar-pegged tokens USDC and USDT continue to lead the category with a combined market capitalization of about $260 billion.