Visa's "Money Travels 2026" study, conducted by Morning Consult and published September 23, surveyed 2,192 U.S. adults between February 24 and March 2 — and the topline number cuts against a lot of crypto-industry assumptions about what's actually holding stablecoin adoption back. It isn't awareness, and it isn't the technology. It's trust in what happens if something goes wrong.

Respondents were given plain-language definitions of stablecoins and related terms before answering, which matters given that 56% of them said they'd never encountered stablecoins before taking the survey. Baseline adoption intent — willingness to actually use one — sat at 36%. Add a hypothetical combination of bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, and that number jumped to 56%. Simply offering the stablecoin through an existing, trusted financial provider rather than a crypto-native app moved intent to 45% on its own.

Trust in the wrapper, not the ledger

Perhaps the most telling number in the whole survey: 64% of respondents said their trust in a payment provider mattered more to them than their confidence in the underlying technology. For an industry that spends enormous energy explaining blockchain mechanics — how reserves are held, how transactions settle, why a particular chain is more decentralized or efficient than another — that's a blunt signal that most prospective users aren't evaluating the technology at all. They're evaluating whether the institution putting its name on the product is one they already trust.

Why this lands right after the Fed's rulemaking

This survey result arrives in the same week as the Federal Reserve's proposed capital and redemption rules for GENIUS Act stablecoin issuers — rules that exist specifically to make "bank-level protections" something regulators can actually enforce, rather than a marketing phrase. If Visa's data is right that protections, not blockchain mechanics, are the adoption lever that matters, then the unglamorous regulatory plumbing — capital requirements, two-day redemption guarantees, reserve audits — may end up doing more for mainstream stablecoin adoption than any consumer-facing feature a wallet or app could ship.

The caveat

It's worth being honest about what a hypothetical-conditions survey can and can't tell you. Respondents were reacting to a described scenario, not an actual product they'd used — stated intent under hypothetical protections tends to run higher than revealed behavior once a real product with real friction shows up. Still, the direction of the finding is hard to argue with: protections move the number more than any pitch about speed, cost, or decentralization does.

Why it matters

This survey lands in the same batch as two regulatory stories — the Fed's proposed capital rules and the OCC's trust-charter race — for a reason: all three are about the same underlying question, which is who gets to credibly claim "this is safe" to a mainstream user. Banks and fintechs reading Visa's data now face a build-versus-partner decision. A bank that already has deposit insurance and fraud-protection infrastructure can plausibly launch a stablecoin product and inherit trust it took decades to earn. A crypto-native issuer has to either partner with an institution that has that trust already, or spend years building an equivalent reputation from scratch. That's a real competitive divide, and it's one regulation can widen or narrow depending on how rules like the Fed's capital requirements get written — rules that, not coincidentally, exist to make "bank-level protections" enforceable rather than just a phrase in a press release. For a consumer, the practical upshot is simpler: when comparing two stablecoin products, ask less about the underlying chain and more about who's actually standing behind the money if the issuer runs into trouble, since that's the question this survey suggests most people are implicitly asking already, whether or not they'd frame it that way. It's also a data point worth remembering the next time a crypto-native company launches a stablecoin with a splashy tokenomics pitch and no mention of who insures a shortfall — Visa's survey suggests that pitch is aimed at an audience smaller than the industry sometimes assumes. And it hints at where the next round of stablecoin product launches is likely to come from: not new entrants trying to win users on technology alone, but existing financial brands adding a stablecoin feature to an app people already trust for everything else. That's a less exciting story than a scrappy startup disrupting payments, but it's the one this particular dataset actually supports, and it lines up with a pattern showing up across several other stories in this same batch: regulation and incumbent trust, not raw technical novelty, are increasingly what determines which stablecoin products actually reach mainstream users.

Further reading

Frequently asked

Does this mean most Americans already use stablecoins?

No — 56% of respondents said they'd never encountered stablecoins before taking the survey. The 36%-to-56% figures measure stated willingness to adopt under certain conditions, not current usage.

What would move adoption intent the most, according to the survey?

Adding hypothetical bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance moved intent from 36% to 56% — a bigger jump than any single technology or cost-savings pitch tested in the survey.

Does it matter which company offers the stablecoin?

Yes, significantly. Offering it through an existing, trusted financial provider rather than a crypto-native app moved adoption intent to 45% on its own, and 64% of respondents said trust in the provider mattered more than confidence in the underlying technology.