Visa, Mesh partner to enable crypto spending at 175M merchant locations

The significance here is less about new spending rails than about who controls the handoff between self-custodied wallets and card-network settlement — Mesh sits in that middle layer, and Visa is choosing to route through a third party rather than build wallet connectivity itself. It matters most to wallet providers and stablecoin issuers whose assets become spendable at the point of sale, and to the card networks' competitive positioning against bank-issued crypto cards. The open question is whether direct wallet-to-merchant settlement actually displaces the card issuance model or simply adds another front end to it.