The integration of stablecoins with traditional payment systems is accelerating. Visa's crypto business division recently revealed some interesting data: through stablecoin-linked payment cards, the current annualized settlement volume has reached $4.5 billion, and this is just the early stage.

But the problem is also quite clear—the real bottleneck is on the merchant side. Although user demand is growing, the infrastructure for merchants to widely adopt stablecoin payments is not yet fully developed. This is also why Visa has been pushing for a deeper integration of stablecoins into the existing payment ecosystem.

Good news is, they have already started taking action. Some banks in the United States are now authorized to directly connect with USDC and Visa's system. What does this pilot project mean? It indicates that the pathway from theoretical concept to practical application for stablecoins is being paved.

Once the onboarding costs for merchants decrease, a large-scale explosion could be just around the corner. After all, the $4.5 billion annualized volume is just a warm-up; the actual market demand far exceeds this number. For stablecoins to become a mainstream payment method, one more step is needed—that merchants find it simple enough to use.