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The Rise of Regional Payment Networks: How Stablecoins Outpaced Visa and Mastercard

· 11 min read
Dora Noda
Dora Noda
Software Engineer

When stablecoin transfers quietly processed $27.6 trillion in 2024—outpacing Visa and Mastercard's combined volume by nearly 8%—most headlines missed the real story. The shift wasn't happening in Silicon Valley board rooms or Wall Street trading desks. It was unfolding across QR-code-enabled street vendors in Lagos, mobile money kiosks in Nairobi, and scan-to-pay terminals throughout Southeast Asia.

Welcome to the age of regional payment networks, where a constellation of focused players is systematically dismantling the assumption that global payments require global companies.

The $27 Trillion Signal​

For decades, cross-border payments have been the exclusive domain of a few giants. Visa processes transactions in over 200 countries. Mastercard serves 150 million merchants globally. PayPal's network spans 200 markets. These numbers seemed insurmountable—until they weren't.

According to CEX.IO research, USD-backed stablecoins outperformed Visa and Mastercard in all four quarters of 2024 and continued their dominance into Q1 2025. But the more interesting finding isn't the volume—it's where the volume is coming from.

The Chainalysis 2024 Global Adoption Index reveals that Central and Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO) leads global cryptocurrency adoption, with seven of the top 20 countries located in the region. Sub-Saharan Africa saw "significant" DeFi growth, with South Africa emerging as a major hub for retail crypto payments.

This isn't random. It's the result of regional networks building infrastructure that actually fits local needs.

AEON: 50 Million Merchants in 18 Months​

Consider AEON, a payment network that most Western observers have never heard of. Within 18 months of launch, AEON has connected over 50 million merchants across emerging markets, primarily in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The numbers tell a compelling story:

  • 20+ million merchants acquired within four months of launch
  • 994,000+ transactions processed worth over $29 million in early volume
  • 200,000+ active users leveraging scan-to-pay functionality

AEON's approach sidesteps the traditional card network model entirely. Rather than requiring POS terminal upgrades or merchant agreements through acquiring banks, AEON enables payments via QR codes—the same interface that already dominates payments across Asia. In December 2025, AEON integrated with X Layer, OKX's Ethereum Layer 2, bringing scan-to-pay capability directly to the network's merchant base.

The network's 2026 roadmap is even more ambitious: establishing industry standards for AI agent payments with "Know Your Agent" authentication frameworks that could make AEON the default settlement layer for autonomous commerce.

Gnosis Pay: Self-Custody Meets Visa Rails​

While AEON is building parallel infrastructure, Gnosis Pay is taking a different approach: leveraging existing rails while preserving crypto's core value proposition.

The Gnosis Pay Visa debit card launched across Europe in February 2024 with a unique selling point—it's genuinely self-custodial. Unlike virtually every other crypto card, which requires depositing funds into a custodial account, Gnosis Pay users maintain control of their private keys. Funds stay in a Safe wallet on Gnosis Chain until the moment of purchase.

The economics are equally distinctive:

  • Zero transaction fees at any of Visa's 80+ million global merchants
  • Zero foreign exchange fees for international purchases
  • Zero off-ramping fees that typically drain 1-3% of every transaction

For European users, Gnosis Pay provides an Estonia IBAN through a partnership with Monerium, enabling SEPA transfers and salary deposits. It's effectively a traditional bank account backed by self-custodial crypto.

The tiered cashback system—ranging from 1% to 5% based on GNO token holdings—creates alignment between users and the network. But the real innovation is proving that card networks and self-custody aren't mutually exclusive. Gnosis Pay has demonstrated that crypto payments can integrate with existing infrastructure without sacrificing the properties that make crypto valuable.

Geographic expansion plans for 2026 include the USA, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, and India—essentially, the same emerging markets where AEON is building alternative rails.

M-Pesa: 60 Million Users Go On-Chain​

If AEON represents new entrants and Gnosis Pay represents crypto-native innovation, M-Pesa represents something potentially more significant: incumbent adoption.

In January 2026, M-Pesa—Africa's dominant mobile money platform with over 60 million monthly users—announced a partnership with the ADI Foundation to deploy blockchain infrastructure across eight African countries: Kenya, the DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

The timing aligns with Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, which took effect in November 2025 as Africa's most comprehensive cryptocurrency regulatory framework. The partnership will introduce a UAE Dirham-backed stablecoin—issued by First Abu Dhabi Bank under UAE Central Bank oversight—providing users with a hedge against local currency volatility.

The opportunity is substantial. Kenya alone processed $3.3 billion in stablecoin transactions in the year to June 2024, ranking fourth among African nations. The cryptocurrency market across sub-Saharan Africa grew 52% year-over-year, reaching over $205 billion between July 2024 and June 2025.

But volume tells only part of the story. The more compelling statistic: 42% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa remain unbanked. M-Pesa's blockchain integration isn't disrupting financial services—it's providing them for the first time to populations that traditional banks have systematically ignored.

The Cost Arbitrage​

Why are regional networks succeeding where global players have struggled for decades? The answer comes down to economics that make global payment giants structurally uncompetitive for cross-border transfers.

Traditional remittance costs:

  • Sub-Saharan Africa average: 8.78% of transaction value (Q1 2025, World Bank)
  • Global average: 6%+ for cross-border transfers
  • Bank wire processing time: 3-5 business days

Stablecoin transfer costs:

For a $200 remittance to Kenya, the math is stark: a traditional transfer might cost $17.56 in fees; a stablecoin transfer costs roughly $1-2. When global remittances exceed $800 billion annually, that cost difference represents tens of billions in potential savings—money that currently flows to intermediaries rather than recipients.

Regional networks are capturing this arbitrage because they're built for it. They don't carry the legacy infrastructure costs of correspondent banking relationships or the compliance overhead of operating in 200 markets simultaneously.

The B2B Explosion​

Consumer payments get the headlines, but the faster-growing segment is B2B. Monthly B2B stablecoin payment volumes surged from under $100 million in early 2023 to over $3 billion by 2025—a 30-fold increase in two years.

Companies across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are increasingly using stablecoins for global payroll, supplier payments, and FX optimization. Bitso, the Latin American crypto platform, has reported significant B2B flows driven entirely by stablecoin settlement.

Analysis of 31 stablecoin payment companies shows that over $94.2 billion in payments were settled from January 2023 to February 2025. These aren't speculative transactions—they're ordinary business payments operating outside traditional banking rails.

The appeal is straightforward: businesses in emerging markets often face unreliable correspondent banking relationships, multi-day settlement times, and opaque fees. Stablecoins provide immediate finality and predictable costs, regardless of which countries are involved in the transaction.

How Traditional Giants Are Responding​

Visa and Mastercard aren't ignoring the threat. Mastercard partnered with MoonPay to enable stablecoin payments across 150 million merchants. Visa is piloting stablecoin services in six Latin American countries and supports over 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in more than 40 countries.

But their response reveals the structural challenge. Traditional networks are adding crypto as an optional overlay to existing infrastructure. Regional networks are building crypto-native infrastructure from the ground up.

The distinction matters. When Gnosis Pay offers zero fees, it's because the underlying Gnosis Chain was designed for efficient settlement. When Visa offers stablecoin support, it's routing through the same correspondent banking system that makes traditional transfers expensive. The infrastructure dictates the economics.

2026: The Year of Convergence​

Several trends are converging to accelerate regional network adoption:

Regulatory clarity: Kenya's VASP Act, the EU's MiCA framework, and Brazil's stablecoin regulations are creating compliance pathways that were absent even 18 months ago.

Infrastructure maturity: Southeast Asia's digital payments market is projected to hit $3 trillion by end of 2025, expanding at 18% annually. That's infrastructure regional crypto networks can leverage rather than build from scratch.

Mobile penetration: Africa's mobile money ecosystem reached 562 million users in 2025, handling $495 billion in yearly transactions. Every smartphone becomes a potential crypto payment terminal.

User volume: Over 560 million people worldwide hold cryptocurrency as of early 2025, with growth concentrated in the same regions where traditional banking fails.

The first wave of stablecoin infrastructure scaling will really happen in 2026, according to AArete's global head of financial services consulting. Crypto payment adoption is projected to grow 85% through 2026, fueled by regulatory support and scalable infrastructure.

The Localization Advantage​

Perhaps the most underappreciated advantage regional networks hold is localization—not just in language, but in payment behavior.

QR codes dominate payments across Asia for cultural and practical reasons that differ from the card-centric West. M-Pesa's agent network model works in Africa because it mirrors existing informal economy structures. Latin America's preference for bank transfers over cards reflects decades of credit card fraud concerns.

Regional networks understand these nuances because they're built by teams embedded in local markets. AEON's founders understand Southeast Asian payment behavior. Gnosis Pay's team understands European regulatory requirements. M-Pesa's operators have 15 years of experience in African mobile money.

Global networks, by contrast, optimize for the average case. They provide the same POS terminals to Lagos as they do to London, the same onboarding flows to Jakarta as to New York. The result is infrastructure that works acceptably everywhere but optimally nowhere.

What This Means for the Future​

The implications extend beyond payments. Regional networks are proving that critical financial infrastructure doesn't require global scale to be valuable—it requires local fit.

This suggests a future where payments fragment into regional networks connected by interoperability protocols, rather than consolidating under a few global providers. It's a model that more closely resembles the internet—multiple networks connected by common standards—than the current credit card duopoly.

For emerging market populations, this shift represents something more significant: the first credible alternative to financial systems that have extracted fees while providing minimal service for decades.

For traditional payment giants, it represents an existential strategic question: can they adapt their infrastructure quickly enough, or will regional networks capture the next billion payment users before they can respond?

The next 24 months will provide the answer.

For builders developing in the Web3 payments space, robust infrastructure is the foundation of everything. BlockEden.xyz provides enterprise-grade API access across major blockchain networks including Ethereum, Solana, and Sui—the same chains powering the next generation of payment applications. Explore our API marketplace to build on infrastructure designed for the scale these opportunities demand.

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