Mesh partners with Visa to make crypto spendable at 175 million merchants

Mesh has partnered with Visa so that crypto and stablecoin balances can be spent at more than 175 million merchant locations worldwide. The partnership was announced on October 19, 2026, live on stage at the Money20/20 conference in San Francisco. Mesh CEO Bam Azizi framed it as a fix for what he called the “last-mile problem” in crypto spending. How the plumbing actually works Under the arrangement, users can buy things with their digital assets without converting them first. They also skip the step of preloading a card, which has long been the clunky middle stage of most crypto card products. Mesh’s orchestration infrastructure handles funding, conversion, and routing in real time, at the moment a purchase happens. Behind the scenes, Mesh issues a Visa credential. That credential is what the merchant’s payment terminal recognizes, so the transaction looks like any other Visa payment from the store’s side. Merchants receive standard fiat settlement. They don’t need to change their existing workflows, install new hardware, or explain to their accountant why there is a Bitcoin wallet on the balance sheet. The scale on both sides Visa brings the reach. Its network processed $14.2 tri...