๐ July 12, 2025 | San Francisco, USA
Today, the cryptocurrency world woke up to news that is lighting up forums and Telegram groups: Solana Labs and Visa announced a strategic collaboration to take Web3 payments to a new level. The goal? Enable stablecoin payments on the Solana network, promising near-instant settlements and ultra-low fees. Within hours, the SOL token reacted strongly: +7% in the last 24 hours and thousands of users celebrating the union of two giants that, until recently, seemed worlds apart.
While some see this announcement as a bridge between traditional banking and blockchain infrastructure, others wonder if Solana, after several technical setbacks, will be able to handle the weight of an integration of this magnitude. What no one disputes is that the news puts Solana back on the table among the major players in the crypto ecosystem.
The story behind this alliance began to quietly simmer months ago, when executives at Visa, one of the world's largest payment processors, began exploring high-speed, low-cost blockchain networks to integrate stablecoin payments. According to leaks collected by Decrypt and CoinDesk, Solana was chosen for its ability to process more than 65,000 transactions per second (TPS) and its near-zero gas costs compared to Ethereum or other chains.
The official announcement was made today from Visa's offices in San Francisco, where representatives from both companies signed a memorandum of understanding detailing that Visa will use the Solana network as a settlement layer for Web3 payments. This means that, in theory, merchants and online platforms will be able to accept USDC or other stablecoins and settle in seconds through Solana, without waiting hours or paying high gas fees.
This collaboration is a key step for Visa, which has been experimenting with crypto payments since 2021, but until now has been limited to pilot integrations with Ethereum and Polygon. For Solana, which has been hit hard in the past by network outages and congestion issues, the goal is to demonstrate that its blockchain can withstand the real burdens of the traditional financial world.
Meanwhile, analysts highlight the immediate effect: the price of SOL rose from $145 to $155 USD within hours of the news. Optimistic traders project that if the alliance is implemented smoothly, Solana could climb back to prices close to its all-time highs of 2021-2022.
However, more skeptical voices point out that trust in Solana still has raw wounds. Experts such as Laura Mรฉndez, a fintech lawyer, warn: โSolana's potential is undeniable, but this type of integration requires almost banking-like reliability standards. A single technical glitch could put Visa in trouble and open the door to regulatory criticism.โ
For now, both Visa and Solana Labs assure that the internal testing phase began today and that real-world payment pilots will be implemented in select merchants in Europe and North America over the next six months.
Topic Opinion:
This announcement is a logical and necessary step: blockchain and traditional banking cannot continue to turn their backs on each other if we want to see truly global, fast, and minimal-fee payments. The Visa-Solana alliance could mark a turning point if it proves it can scale without sacrificing security or transparency.
My advice: celebrate, but with caution. Solana's technology must overcome its long-standing woes of network congestion and outages. If it succeeds, its narrative as "the fastest and most efficient blockchain" will gain a strong case to compete with Ethereum in the Web3 payments game.
๐ฌ Do you think Solana is ready to be the foundation of global payments?
Will Visa take the lead over other traditional payment processors? Which stablecoin do you think will dominate this alliance?
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