Trust is still the biggest barrier to stablecoin adoption: 56% of Americans had never heard of stablecoins, and many who had assumed they were as volatile as Bitcoin.
More than half of Americans would use stablecoins if they came with bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, Visa said in a study released on Wednesday. The numbers were 36% without those safeguards and 56% with them.
Those safeguards were hypothetical, and Visa’s release notes that no stablecoin carries deposit insurance today. The same scenario lifted intent to 74% in Latin America.
Fraud Shapes the Remittance Findings
The report, Money Travels 2026, draws on a Morning Consult survey of 2,192 U.S. adults run from February 24 to March 2. The full survey covers 45,445 people across 20 markets and is built around remittances.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) said trust in a payment method depends more on who offers it than on the technology. Willingness to use stablecoins rose to 45% when an existing financial provider offered them. Traditional banks and global payment networks were the most trusted providers of digital currency services, at 61% and 60%. Globally, the trust figure was 69%.
Over half of respondents (56%) had never heard of stablecoins. Many who had heard of them assumed the coins fluctuated like Bitcoin, the study found.
One in four senders worldwide had run into fraud, along with more than a third of Americans and 40% of Indians. Some 44% of Americans worried about AI deepfakes impersonating family, and 45% would accept a 24-hour delay on a transfer for stronger protection. In Japan, 68% would accept that delay.
“The future of the industry will be won by the providers that work hardest to earn that trust,” said Vira Platonova, Global Head of Visa Direct.
Visa’s Own Stablecoin Footprint
Visa is a founding validator on Circle’s Arc blockchain alongside BlackRock, Mastercard and DTCC. Crypto-linked card payments, where Visa handles more than 90% of stablecoin card transactions, reached $18 billion in 2025, per Artemis.
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In August last year, the network added PayPal USD (PYUSD) and the Global Dollar (USDG) to its settlement stablecoins through Paxos, along with the Stellar and Avalanche chains.
Visa said stablecoins account for a growing share of cross-border money flows. Dollar stablecoins in circulation total about $312 billion, per DefiLlama, with Tether’s USDT at $184 billion and Circle’s USDC at $76 billion.
