Americans Would Use Stablecoins—If They Came With Bank Protections, Visa Study Finds

In brief

• Visa's Money Travels 2026 report found U.S. willingness to use stablecoins for international transfers jumps from 36% to 56% in a hypothetical scenario with bank-level safeguards.
• Awareness is still low: 56% of Americans have never heard of stablecoins. Interest rises to 45% when they're offered through an existing financial provider.
• Stablecoins aren't FDIC-insured, and Visa said its scenario doesn't signal that such protections are coming.

Most Americans still don't know what a stablecoin is. Offer them the safety net of a bank account, though, and a majority say they'd use one.

That's the principal finding from Visa's Money Travels 2026 report, released Wednesday. In a hypothetical scenario where stablecoins came with bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, the share of Americans willing to use them for international transfers jumped from 36% to 56%, the payments giant said.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable asset, usually the U.S. dollar, and designed to avoid Bitcoin-style price swings. They don't carry FDIC insurance, and Visa stressed that its scenario doesn't suggest such protections exist or are coming.

Familiarity is the bigger hurdle. Some 56% of U.S. respondents had never heard of stablecoins, and many who had wrongly assumed they fluctuate like Bitcoin.