Why Visa’s Stablecoin “Advisory” Isn’t a Neutral Guide

Visa recently announced a new Stablecoins Advisory Practice operated through its consulting arm, Visa Consulting & Analytics. The service is marketed as a way to help banks, fintechs, merchants, and other institutions understand stablecoin strategy, market fit, and implementation. It includes things like strategy development, use-case sizing, and support for integration. On the surface, this may look like valuable guidance — but there’s a structural conflict of interest that most buyers aren’t being told explicitly.

1. Visa Is Not a Neutral Advisor—It Has a Direct Commercial Stake Visa’s advisory practice isn’t a standalone boutique consultancy leveraged for impartial strategy exploration — it’s embedded within a payments network that already has commercial incentives tied to stablecoin deployment: Visa has built stablecoin settlement capabilities and payment rails that integrate with its existing global network, and these initiatives have already reached billions in annualized settlement volume. Visa’s ecosystem includes stablecoin-linked cards, settlement projects, and network incentives that benefit when institutions use Visa’s rails and services. That means every recommendation from this advisory arm inherently flows through the lens of: “How do we drive more volume and products onto Visa rails?” An advisor with a commercial stake in a specific outcome simply can’t be neutral—no matter how well-intentioned the consultants are individually.

2. Clients May Be Directed Toward Visa-Aligned Outcomes When an advisory practice is part of an organization that profits from the adoption of specific technologies or rails, two predictable dynamics emerge: A. Recommendations favor integration with the parent company’s products Visa’s consulting arm is structurally incentivized to recommend paths that position clients to leverage Visa’s payments infrastructure and stablecoin rails—because that increases Visa’s own revenue opportunities. This is not inherently wrong — but it is inherently non-neutral. For a family office or institutional treasury looking for independent strategic guidance, a recommendation that emerges from a company that sells related products is not the same as an unbiased assessment.

3. “Training” and Strategy Can Be Used to Shape Market Narratives Visa’s offering includes stablecoin training and market trend programs through Visa University. The fee for its basic virtual stablecoin course is $2,000.00. But this raises a core question: If the education is produced by an entity with a product and ecosystem to promote, can it truly be independent? Training that appears advisory may in practice introduce vendor-aligned framing—especially when the outcomes being discussed align with the advisor’s commercial path.

4. Visa’s Advisory Is Built on the Same Path It Profits From Visa’s advisory practice launches at the same time that: Visa’s stablecoin settlement business reports strong growth (e.g., $3.5 billion annualized volume). Visa continues to expand stablecoin–linked cards and payment products. This is not a neutral research institute recommending general best practices—it is a payments company selling strategy that aligns with its business model. For family offices making strategic decisions about stablecoin usage in treasury, payments, and international cost structures, that’s an important distinction.

5. Advisors With Skin in the Game Are Different from Independent Strategists When a family office engages an advisor, the three attributes that matter most are: Clarity Clear, candid assessments of risks and rewards, without product bias. Neutral exploration True strategic options — not routes that privilege a particular vendor. Decision support Insight that helps the client decide for themselves, not sell them a path. Visa’s Stablecoins Advisory Practice mixes consulting with embedded product incentives because: Visa benefits when more institutions adopt Visa-linked stablecoin rails Visa benefits if clients choose solutions that increase volume on its network Visa benefits from training that familiarizes clients with its ecosystem That’s not the same as impartial market guidance. If a consultant has an incentive to steer toward specific infrastructure or partners, that raises legitimate concerns about: whether the advice is aligned with true client interest whether alternative approaches were fully explored whether assessments of tradeoffs were even handed

6. What Truly Neutral Advisory Looks Like — and Why It Matters Neutral advisory should include: Independent evaluation of all relevant infrastructure options Clear disclosure of incentives or conflicts Head-to-head comparisons, not implied preferred vendor paths Frameworks that prioritize client outcomes over partner sales

At Stablecoin Solutions, we provide strategic, regulatory-aware guidance without selling infrastructure, products, or rails—meaning recommendations are shaped only by client outcomes, not by what benefits a payment network incumbent.