Visa CFO Chris Suh says stablecoins and agents won’t matter for months

Visa CFO Chris Suh is basically telling the market to pump the brakes: stablecoins and agentic commerce are important investments, but they are not the reason Visa is accelerating right now, at least not in the next few quarters. “I’m hesitant to lean into the stablecoin and agentic commerce narratives too much,” Suh tells Fortune. In the short term, he argues, the “vast majority” of Visa’s business has “nothing to do with those things.”

That stance matters because Visa is reporting fast growth. Visa reported net revenue of $11.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 17% year-on-year, marking the fastest growth since 2022. The business momentum Suh points to is traditional payments muscle: in Q2, global payments volume was up 9%, cross-border volume was up 11%, and total processed transactions grew 9%. Translation: investors looking for a digital-currency-led explanation for Visa’s latest surge are going to come up short.

So where does stablecoin actually show up at Visa today? Visa first started offering stablecoin settlements in 2023, and it now has 130 stablecoin-linked card issuing programs across 40 countries. That is not nothing, but Suh highlights that the scale relative to Visa’s overall payments network is still tiny. Just $7 billion of annual settlements on Visa’s platform are made in cryptocurrencies, compared with $14 trillion overall. Even if you believe stablecoins will grow, the current math tells you why Suh is cautious about overstating impact. The stablecoin story is real, but it is not yet a main driver of Visa’s economics.

Visa is also experimenting with “agentic commerce,” meaning AI agents that can make payments on their own. Visa’s Intelligent Commerce, its AI-powered commerce push, launched in April 2025, letting AI agents shop and pay on a user’s behalf. By late 2025, Visa had expanded agentic commerce pilots to Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. But again, Suh’s framing is about timing and monetization. “Both agentic commerce and stablecoins are important investments that today don't have immediate ROI,” he says. “They won’t pay off in the next six months, but could over the next six years.” That is a CFO’s way of saying: the roadmap is there, the revenue line is not yet.

If this feels like a gap between strategy and near-term results, you are not imagining it. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said during the Q2 earnings call that Visa’s momentum in consumer, commercial and money movement is strong and “will strengthen with agentic commerce and stablecoins.” He also pointed to emerging-market adoption: in many countries, especially emerging markets, consumers and businesses are increasingly using stablecoins as a store of value, and Visa is providing “on-ramps and off-ramps” with stablecoin-linked Visa cards. Suh essentially acknowledges the destination, but insists the business is getting there on today’s rails, not because of those rails yet.

There is also an internal dynamics angle. Suh’s caution contrasts with Stephen Karpin, Visa’s Asia-Pacific head, who previously framed stablecoins as a key part of Visa’s strategy. Karpin told Fortune in November, “We want to make [stablecoins] one of the options to make and receive payments all around the world, when the regulatory environment is ready.” He added that Visa has “assets in the form of technology and capability,” and wants to help businesses, large and small, start conducting commerce in Web3.

That “regulatory environment is ready” line is doing a lot of work. Stablecoins are not just a tech choice. They are a regulatory, risk, and compliance choice. For a network like Visa, stablecoin settlement rails potentially involve new counterparties, new controls, and new uncertainty around rules that can vary by jurisdiction. Suh’s message reads like risk-managed sequencing: build capability, expand pilots, accumulate coverage (those 130 programs), but do not pretend the bulk of payments volume will reroute through crypto rails immediately.

Suh’s region-by-region explanation also ties to why Visa might hedge on near-term monetization. Asia is one of Visa’s fastest-growing regions, contributing around 14% of payments volume on Visa’s platforms, up 6.5% year-on-year. Suh calls Asia a “lab” for new products, citing how it blends emerging and mature markets. He points to Japan as a unique case because it has a bigger cash percentage than any other tier one economy in the world, describing it as “an interesting landscape to operate in.” He also says Asia is where Visa sees more digital wallets per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Visa’s track record of localized execution supports that approach. In 2023, Visa launched Visa Flex Credential with local issuer Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company. The technology lets users consolidate up to five cards into a single credential, and Visa later expanded the service to North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Suh emphasizes the operational investment: “We’ve invested significantly in Asia-our employees are local, our clients are local,” and solutions are “very customized” to the markets Visa operates in.

For other payments executives, board members, and investors, Suh’s comments land on a key governance question: how much of your growth narrative should depend on experimental rails versus proven network monetization? Visa’s stablecoin-linked programs and agentic AI pilots show real momentum, but the CFO is warning against extrapolating too quickly from pilots and settlement experiments into near-term ROI. In other words, the strategic bet may be correct, but the timing may be measured in years, not quarters.