Bank-like safeguards could materially change consumers’ stated willingness to use stablecoins, according to U.S. survey findings released by Visa. The result puts fraud protection, provider trust and clear loss-allocation rules near the center of the product-design challenge for stablecoin remittances.
In a hypothetical scenario that added bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance, the share of U.S. respondents expressing an intention to use stablecoins increased from 36% to 56%. Offering stablecoins through an existing financial provider produced a smaller increase, from 36% to 45%.
Those figures measure stated intent under survey conditions, not actual adoption or transaction volume. Visa also emphasized that stablecoins are not currently covered by deposit insurance such as that provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The scenario therefore tests how consumers react to protections that are not generally part of today’s stablecoin proposition.
Provider trust matters alongside the technology
The study found that 64% of U.S. respondents said their trust in a payment method depends more on the provider than on the underlying technology. Traditional commercial banks and global payment networks were the most trusted groups named for digital-currency services, at 61% and 60%, respectively.
That finding is commercially important for banks, payment networks, wallets and remittance providers evaluating stablecoin products. A familiar brand may reduce the perceived risk of trying a new payment method, but the survey suggests that distribution alone does not close the confidence gap. The larger increase associated with hypothetical fraud protection and insurance points to the importance of the operating rules behind the interface.
For providers, those rules include how a transfer is authorized, what happens when an account is compromised, whether a payment can be recalled, which party absorbs a loss, how complaints are investigated and how users redeem tokens for conventional money. Stablecoin settlement can move value quickly, but speed does not by itself answer those customer-protection questions.
Awareness remains a separate barrier
Visa said 56% of U.S. respondents had never heard of stablecoins. Respondents were given definitions of key terms before answering, which makes the results useful for comparing scenarios but limits what they show about unaided demand in the market.
The research also found that 45% of Americans would accept a 24-hour transfer delay in exchange for stronger fraud protection. That result challenges the assumption that faster settlement will always outweigh risk controls in cross-border payments. For some customers, a short delay, warning or review step may be a feature when a transfer appears unusual.
This does not mean every stablecoin payment should be slowed or made reversible. It does suggest that providers need configurable controls: transaction limits, risk-based holds, recipient verification, clear confirmations and escalation paths for suspected fraud. The appropriate design may differ between a merchant payment, a remittance, a treasury transfer and a wallet-to-wallet payment.
A survey signal, not an adoption forecast
Morning Consult conducted the study for Visa from February 24 to March 2, 2026. The U.S. sample included 2,192 adults, while the global study covered 45,445 respondents in 20 markets. Visa described the findings as self-reported survey responses and explicitly labeled the bank-equivalent protection scenarios as hypothetical.
The strongest conclusion is therefore not that stablecoin use will rise to 56%. It is that consumers appear sensitive to who provides the service and what protections surround it. Payments companies considering stablecoin remittances should treat fraud operations, dispute handling, disclosures and loss allocation as core product infrastructure rather than support functions added after launch.