# Visa Reset Cuts Adjusted Stablecoin Volume Without Measuring Payments

By Enna Lee

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/investing/24607
Published: 2026-09-27T14:06:25.000Z
Updated: 2026-09-27T14:06:25.000Z
Section: Investing

> A Sept. 18, 2026, refresh expanded labeled addresses from about 15 million to roughly 600 million, while adjusted transaction counts fell by less than 2%.

Visa’s adjusted stablecoin volume fell after a Sept. 18, 2026, data refresh expanded its labeled-address set from about 15 million to roughly 600 million, while adjusted transaction counts declined by less than 2%.

The revised data does not show whether real-world stablecoin payments increased or decreased. The published figures also do not quantify how much of the volume change came from high-value activity, expanded labels, short-term-routing rules or revised payment identification.

The adjusted-volume definition excludes labeled exchanges, contracts, bots, bridges and other infrastructure, along with stablecoin minting and burning. The refresh added labels for maximum extractable value activity and third-party contracts, introduced new short-term-routing rules, and updated the identification of organic activity and payments.

One Solana program cycled the same stablecoins through thousands of temporary wallets. The transfers moved large amounts through relatively few transactions and are now excluded from adjusted volume across multiple chains. That pattern shows how dollar volume can change substantially while transaction counts move much less.

Payments are defined as businesses and consumers using stablecoins for goods, services, payroll or person-to-person transfers. Adjusted transactions below $250 are classified as “retail sized,” but a transfer below that threshold is not automatically a purchase or merchant payment.

On-chain stablecoin activity can also reflect exchange flows, decentralized finance, automated trading, infrastructure, routing or complex smart-contract transactions. A small number of large transfers can therefore affect dollar volume without representing a comparable change in payment activity.

In 2025, nearly 60% of more than 593 million stablecoin transfer events across 141 million Ethereum transactions occurred within complex transactions. About one-third of the transactions involved multiple steps beyond a simple payment. The analysis covered Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and PayPal USD (PYUSD).

Ethereum stablecoin activity was more closely associated with smart-contract interactions, while Tron activity was more commonly held outside smart contracts, consistent with transactional and store-of-value uses.

The dashboard also lists more than 3 million labeled addresses, a figure that does not match the roughly 600 million cited in the Sept. 18 refresh. The relationship between the two address figures is not established, and the available figures do not provide matched pre- and post-refresh dollar totals or comparable payment-category totals.