In September an FDIC-insured bank put stablecoins into its core ledger, and Solana started settling a million payments a second. Here are five payments stories from the month on Solana.
1. Payment Channels went live, taking Solana to 1,000,000 payments per second
Every call an agent makes needs a signature approval and settlement, which gets more complicated when agents are making hundreds of small paid calls in a loop. Payment Channels, live on Solana since September 3, let an agent authorize a spending limit once, spend against the limit, and settle the payment amount once. Settlement moves to the end instead of the middle. Alibaba Cloud API endpoints were live through it on day one, with no account setup and no per-call approvals.
"Think of it like a bar tab or a prepaid meter: you put money down up front, run up usage without paying for each transaction, and settle payment once when you leave."
Rishin Sharma, Head of AI Growth, Solana Foundation
In testing, 100,000 unique wallets ran through a payment channel proxy issuing more than a million payments per second, enough capacity for over 80 billion payments in 24 hours at an estimated $0.000000000776 per payment.
2. Column built stablecoins into its banking core
Column is the FDIC-insured bank behind Brex and Slash. In September it built stablecoins into its banking core, so USDC and USDT on Solana convert to and from dollars 24/7, instantly, with Solana as the default network. Most bank stablecoin work to date has sat beside the core ledger, in a partnership or a separate product. This sits inside it.
3. Open USD launched with reserves at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY
OUSD went live on Solana at the end of the month, issued by Stablecoin on behalf of Open Standard, with reserves held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY. Businesses can mint and burn 1:1 at no cost through BVNK, Stripe and Visa's Stablecoin Platform, which puts three of the largest distribution routes in payments on the same instrument from launch.
4. Solana carried 76% of all x402 agent payments
Solana took 76% of x402 transactions between August 22 and September 19, 23.2 million against 3.39 million on the next-largest network. On September 2 it processed 1.81 million agent payments in 24 hours. Nansen set a weekly record for agent purchases of its smart money data on Solana, more than on all other networks combined, at roughly a cent per call through PayAI Network.
5. Stablecoin supply on Solana reached an all-time high of $17.3 billion
Supply hit a record $17.3 billion on September 25. Daily stablecoin active addresses reached 888,000 during the month, up 269% from 333,000 a year earlier. Solana carried 420 million USDC transactions in a month, and 6.2 million people sent USDC on it over 30 days, which is 42% of everyone sending USDC anywhere and 2.5x the next network.
Also in September
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Solana Foundation released An Evolution of Money Movement, covering the full remittance picture: the composable stack and the Solana projects at each layer, five business models beyond money movement, four entry paths, and corridor deep dives for the US to Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines and India.
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Tetra Digital Group launched CADD, bringing the Canadian dollar onchain for payments, transfers, treasury and settlement. (announcement)
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SupercoinX launched ZARsc, a Rand-pegged stablecoin, under an FSCA licence with custody by Fireblocks and screening by Chainalysis. (announcement)
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KAST passed $2 billion in all-time deposits after five consecutive weeks of growth. (Paymentscan)
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Africa's biggest IPO opened for subscription with stablecoins on Solana: the Dangote Petroleum Refinery offer, live on NectarFi and powered by GetEquity. (announcement)
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Solana Foundation named Jamal Raees General Manager of Payments and Rachel Conlan Chief Strategy Officer. Raees joins from Polygon Labs, and before that Bridge and Wyre. Conlan joins from three years as Global CMO at Binance. (announcement)
Payments at Breakpoint
Breakpoint is Solana's flagship annual conference, and this year it runs November 15 to 17 at the Olympia Convention Centre in London. Payments is heavily featured in the programme, with operators who move money across borders, issue the cards and run bank digital-asset desks on stage. Here are the payments speakers announced so far:
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Anthony Soohoo, CEO at MoneyGram
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Malcolm Clarke, Global Head of Digital Assets at Western Union
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Alexandra Lang, VP of Digital Assets Partnerships & Strategy at Zelle
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Charles Yoo-Naut, Co-Founder and CTO at Rain
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Zach Abrams, CEO and Founder at Open Standard
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Patrick Corker, Managing Director of Market Transformation and Innovation at BNY
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Scott Lucas, Head of Digital Assets at Barclays
General admission is $550. Get your ticket here.
