Visa and Brale Test Privacy-Enabled SBC Stablecoin Settlement on Canton Network

Visa and stablecoin infrastructure company Brale are piloting settlement using SBC, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Brale, on the Canton Network — the permissioned-but-privacy-preserving blockchain built by Digital Asset for regulated financial institutions. The two companies announced the collaboration on Wednesday, framing it as a test of whether blockchain-based settlement can satisfy the privacy and compliance standards that banks require.

SBC is fully backed by cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. government bonds, with monthly reserve attestations from a third-party accounting firm. Its circulating supply stands at $8.99 million across 11 chains, per DefiLlama — reflecting a pilot-stage instrument, not a scaled issuance.

The proof of concept sits inside a larger stablecoin push at Visa. The company's stablecoin settlement pilot now spans nine blockchains and has reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% quarter over quarter, Visa said in April. Canton was among the five blockchains Visa added at that point.

The Privacy Architecture Argument

The Canton Network, launched by Digital Asset in 2023 and now backed by more than 30 financial institutions, is designed to let participants transact on shared infrastructure without exposing sensitive transaction data to other network members. That configurability, rather than raw throughput or cost, is Canton's institutional sales pitch.

"Stablecoin settlement has shown how blockchain infrastructure can improve the speed and efficiency of money movement," said Cuy Sheffield, Visa's head of crypto, in the company's press release. "Through our work with Brale, we're exploring how SBC on the Canton Network can support institutional settlement use cases that require both programmability and privacy controls."

Ben Milne, founder and CEO of Brale, said financial institutions are "increasingly looking for stablecoin infrastructure that meets their operational, regulatory, and privacy requirements."

SBC is natively issued on Canton, which avoids the bridging mechanics that introduce settlement risk on networks where the stablecoin wasn't designed to originate.

Canton's Institutional Rail Thesis

Canton's TVL stands at roughly $961,000 as of June 4, per DefiLlama, a nascent onchain footprint that understates its institutional deployment, since much of the activity on permissioned settlement networks does not register in standard TVL calculations. The chain's measured TVL has risen 207% since mid-May, an early signal of growing operational usage.

The network has been accumulating institutional participants. JPMorgan's Kinexys unit announced in January that it plans to issue JPM Coin (JPMD), its USD deposit token, natively on Canton across a phased rollout. DTCC and Digital Asset are separately working to make U.S. Treasuries available on Canton. HSBC completed a tokenized deposit pilot on the network in April. And Digital Asset itself is reportedly targeting a $2 billion valuation in a $300 million raise led by a16z crypto.

Institutional Permissioned Settlement

The Canton model competes and sometimes overlaps with other institutional blockchain settlement efforts. JPMorgan's Kinexys (formerly Onyx) has processed billions in interbank settlement through its permissioned ledger since 2020. Fnality, a consortium-owned utility backed by a group of global banks including Santander and Goldman Sachs, is working toward wholesale payment settlement using tokenized central bank money.

The Visa-Brale pairing differs in one respect: Brale is a third-party stablecoin issuer, not a bank, and Visa is a card network running settlement obligations through the instrument, not a direct bank-to-bank transfer. That positions the collaboration closer to a payment-network layer than to a wholesale interbank settlement system.

Pilot Scope and Open Questions

The announcement does not disclose settlement volumes, currencies other than USD, or named counterparties beyond Visa and Brale. No timeline for moving from proof of concept to production is given. Visa described the exercise as evaluating "what it takes to bring these capabilities into production environments."

SBC can be minted and redeemed 1:1 with USDC, USDP, and PYUSD on 10-plus blockchains, and via wire and ACH, according to Brale's documentation. That interoperability means any settlement balances built up on Canton could theoretically flow back to the broader stablecoin ecosystem, a design consideration for institutions that don't want liquidity trapped on a single network.