Visa and Dunamu, Upbit’s parent, to explore stablecoin payments and AI commerce

Visa has formed a strategic partnership with Dunamu, the South Korean company behind Upbit, to look at stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances, settlement, and AI-driven commerce. For PSPs and crypto-facing payments teams, the interesting part is not the press-release gloss; it is that Visa is now publicly testing how digital assets and agentic commerce might plug into existing payment rails.

1. According to Dunamu’s Friday announcement, the two companies will combine Dunamu’s digital asset technology with Visa’s global payments network to explore payment, remittance, and settlement services in major markets. That puts a mainstream card network and a major crypto exchange operator in the same room on infrastructure, which is where these conversations usually start before they become product decisions.
2. Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok said the spread of AI, stablecoins, and tokenization “is a key trend that will change how finance and commerce operate,” adding that the partnership is meant to connect digital assets with traditional finance. In practical terms, that points to use cases that matter to high-risk merchants too: where funds move, how they settle, and what kind of payment stack can sit in between.
3. The companies are considering business models involving Open Standard’s proposed Open USD (OUSD), a dollar-backed stablecoin unveiled in June. Open Standard said more than 140 companies had signed up to use OUSD, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and BlackRock. Dunamu said OUSD is one of several stablecoin projects under review and that it has not prioritized a specific stablecoin for the partnership.
4. There is a bit of history here: in July, Upbit said it was not participating in the issuance of OUSD after its operator, Dunamu, was named among the businesses involved in the initiative. So, while OUSD is on the table, this is not yet a commitment to a single stablecoin rail.
5. The partnership will also examine agentic commerce, where AI agents can search for products and services and make purchases and payments on a user’s behalf. The companies said they will look at ways to combine AI with stablecoin payment and settlement infrastructure, which is exactly the kind of setup PSPs will need to think about if AI starts initiating transactions instead of just recommending them.