Visa’s Big Blockchain Move: Why Privacy Is the Key to Institutional Adoption

Welcome to FinTech TV.

The biggest roadblock keeping traditional banks off the blockchain has been privacy.

The same transparency that makes the technology so revolutionary is often a complete deal breaker for institutions bound by strict compliance rules.

Here at Digital Asset Summit 2026, Visa announced it is joining the Canton network as a super validator, becoming the first major global payments company to help.

Secure this privacy focused blockchain.

Well, joining us to discuss this major milestone for institutional adoption is Rubal Burwatkar, global head of growth products and strategic partnerships at Visa.

Great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So first and foremost, this announcement that was just announced at Digital Asset Summit, walk us through this and tell us what it means to be a super validator on the Caton network.

Yeah, it's um I think, I think you covered it in the intro, which is, we really believe privacy is a central tenet.

That will help ensure a lot more broader um.

Institutional adoption of stablecoins, especially as it relates to payments.

And what we really like about the Canton network is they have a composable architecture, which is really privacy first with like very specific modules about data that they can make available, uh, but not, not.

Default, and there's a lot of like positive things that we see in those characteristics, um, which is one of the reasons why we decided to join Canton as a super validator so we can help govern that network and we bring in an enormous amount of payments, regulated payments expertise.

Um, to chains like Canton, um, especially when it comes to, you know, network resiliency, and we, we obviously carry a lot of trust and credibility with our banking and financial institution partners.

So our goal is here that with us playing a much stronger role in governance as a super validator, we can bring that trust, reliance, operational resiliency to the Canton network and hopefully that can help allow more.

Assets to come on payments to come on chain, uh, with privacy being, you know, one of the crux and most important critical elements.

And two things you mentioned the rubble, stablecoins, as well as privacy.

So walk us through the privacy part of the equation.

Yeah, I think the simplest way to think about it is, um, privacy is fantastic until you actually have to expose your liquidity positions, um, you know, say you want to pay salaries using stablecoins.

It's a lot easier if you're not sort of like, you know.

You have the option to actually not making it public or your liquidity positions or where, sort of like, you know, what sort of collaterals, how much of that do you want to expose or not, and ultimately I think public blockchains have done an enormously fantastic job, uh, to show the power of what stablecoins can do, um, both from an instant settlement 24/7, so like availability, you know, global accessibility, but I do think that as this becomes more and more mainstream to get more institutional adoption, privacy will become an important tenant.

Of stablecoins.

Yeah, and speaking of stablecoins, I do want to ask you about stablecoin payments, especially when it comes to Visa, especially as a global organization.

So for our viewers, can you walk us through what's happening?

Yeah, look, from our perspective, we believe this is an incredible technology which has an enormous amount of potential, and the stablecoins can provide a much, much more efficient infrastructure, um, and especially in markets where You know, like digitization still hasn't sort of like reached the borders.

Um, what we, what we've done on Stablecoin, I mean, I, I shared a little bit about this earlier in my talk, uh, this morning, which is we've, we've, we were one of the first, you know, Networks to enable settlement by our partners, many of them regulated financial institutions, to settle into Visaett on stablecoins, and we've been doing that for a number of years now.

We have several billion dollars in circulation that we're doing on, you know, stablecoin settlement.

Additionally, we are the pioneers of stablecoin linked cards, and today there are over 130 programs.

That issue visa related to stablecoin linked cards in more than 50 markets around the world.

So for us, it's less of a future potential.

We already see it working at scale for like billions of dollars of like payment volume through multiple use cases.

We also recently announced, you know, some of the pilots that they're doing in our visa direct business for payouts and refunding.

So we, we remain incredibly excited and positive about student coins.

Yeah, and finally, before I let you go, I do want to ask you about other partnerships, because when we think about Visa, it is a brand that is recognized around the globe.

So tell us about the partnerships.

Yeah, look, I think partnerships for our business are like, you know, it's, it's a fundamental, you know, ultimately they're a B2B business and Uh, a B2B business is only as good as, like, you know, what sort of like partners do we have around the ecosystem and the same is true in the crypto space.

I think we've been public about our participation as a design partner with Tempo.

We've also been pretty public about the work we're doing with the Arc team.

They're just sort of like, you know, coming onto the desknet.

And we continue to make a lot of sort of like, you know, essentially, our view is this is a game where we continue to sort of like be deeply engaged with the partner ecosystems across the entire stablecoin stack, whether it's L1 chains, L2 chains, whether it's, you know, orchestration providers, whether it's, you know, wallet infrastructure providers, and obviously we bring together like a deep, deep network of, you know, nearly 15,000 banks, nearly 200 million merchants, and nearly 5 billion visa credentials around the world.

So, It's, uh, every incremental partner that we add, we believe we add like an incremental compounding opportunity for growth.

Well, Rubal, it was great talking to you here at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in New York.

I appreciate your time as well as all of your insights.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.