This week, Base App announced a shift to a "transaction-first" strategy. Almost simultaneously, Visa continues to advance the integration of assets like USDC into its payment and settlement system. One relies on Ethereum's scalability, attempting to directly capture users' on-chain transaction entry; the other is a traditional payment giant with a vast network of offline and online merchants, both converging on the question of "who will control the next generation of payment entry." If we place the approximately $4.5 billion in on-chain settlement volume alongside Visa's annual payment volume of $14.2 trillion on the same axis, the comparison reveals that the penetration of on-chain payments in the overall payment market remains extremely low, still largely in the early exploration stage. However, with the rise of new entry points like Base and Visa's proactive embrace of new assets, the competition over "who will lead the next generation of on-chain payments" has come to the forefront, representing both a technological route contest and a struggle for user entry and data control.
Base Shifts from Wallet Narrative to Transaction Entry
Base's announcement of a "transaction-first" strategic shift means it is no longer satisfied with passively receiving on-chain interactions directed from other wallets or entry points; instead, it aims to position itself as the first app users open when engaging in on-chain economic activities. Base has expressed a desire to become the "preferred application for users participating in the on-chain economy," which clearly transcends the narrative of merely being "infrastructure" or "developer-friendly L2," moving closer to a comprehensive transaction and consumption entry role. In the broader industry context, the on-chain transaction experience is becoming a competitive focal point: transaction fees, confirmation times, cross-chain complexity, and security are determining whether ordinary users are willing to take the step of "using it for payment and consumption." By emphasizing "transaction-first" at this juncture, Base aims to occupy a clear ecological niche in terms of user experience—compared to traditional browsers and utility wallets, it resembles a product aimed at end consumers, striving to hide underlying technical details and allowing users to perceive only the logical scenarios of "buy, sell, pay, receive." This positioning is bound to exert pressure on other layer two networks and independent wallets, as once Base truly occupies the "preferred entry" mindset, many users' address management, asset viewing, transaction, and consumption behaviors will be closed-loop within the Base system, increasing the substitutability of wallet layers and weakening other L2s' control over end-user traffic. In this transformation, Base is no longer just an infrastructure providing a low-cost execution environment for developers but is moving towards becoming a "payment and consumption entry," attempting to replicate the "super app" aggregation capability of the mobile internet era in the on-chain world, pushing the on-chain economy from tool-based usage to more everyday consumption and payment.
The Gap Between On-Chain Settlement Volume and Traditional Payments
Regarding the true scale of on-chain payments, the currently confirmable data comes from a single channel: the annual settlement volume of related assets is approximately $4.5 billion, while the circulation of these assets has exceeded $270 billion. The comparison between the two reveals a key signal—most of the chips are still "hoarded on-chain" or used as trading and asset allocation tools, while the portion that truly flows into daily payments and merchant collections remains limited. In stark contrast, Visa's annual total payment volume reaches $14.2 trillion. This data, also from the same source, directly lays bare the current position of on-chain payments in terms of magnitude: whether in merchant coverage or in transaction counts and amounts, on-chain settlement is merely a tiny marginal supplement. Because of its small size but rapid growth, the market remains highly sensitive to the imaginative space in this area. On one hand, traditional payment giants realize that if this settlement continues to expand exponentially in the coming years, it could shift from the margins to an unignorable new increment, even reshaping the structure of the settlement network; on the other hand, emerging on-chain applications see that as long as they can successfully close the loop in terms of experience and scenarios, even if they only carve out a small piece from the $14.2 trillion, the absolute scale is sufficient to support an independent track. It is important to emphasize that all the aforementioned settlement and circulation data comes from a single source, and the statistical criteria may not fully correspond to traditional payment networks, making it more suitable for grasping approximate magnitudes and development directions rather than for precise market penetration rate calculations, and it cannot be used to derive specific growth curves or timelines.
Visa's Path Choice for USDC Settlement
On the traditional network side, Visa has entered the field through multiple lines: first, it has launched payment card products priced in related assets for cardholders and issuing institutions; second, it has initiated a clearing pilot related to USDC, migrating some cross-border or specific scenario settlements from traditional banking channels to on-chain execution. According to public statements, Cuy Sheffield, who is responsible for related business, clearly stated that Visa needs to integrate these new assets into its existing system to maintain its leadership position in the global payment industry, rather than being left behind by new technologies. The path chosen by Visa is not to overthrow the existing clearing network but to overlay new settlement tracks on top of the existing card organization, clearing banks, and merchant networks, with the front end still being familiar card swiping, online payments, and merchant POS processes, while the back end experiments with on-chain assets for fund transfers in certain currencies and regions. For merchants, this design means they hardly need to change their collection methods and reconciliation processes, only adding a potential channel at the settlement level, allowing Visa to gradually increase the weight of new assets within its network under a relatively clear compliance framework and controllable risk. However, from the perspective of merchant and user adoption, related applications are still in a very early stage, with limited coverage scenarios, and the volume has yet to have a substantial impact on Visa's main business. Therefore, the current integration is more about preemptive positioning and technological reserves rather than immediately generating considerable revenue. For Visa, the key now is that when on-chain settlement truly enters the mainstream, it already possesses the capability to switch and connect seamlessly within its own network, rather than starting from scratch.
The Confrontation Over Payment Entry and Data Control
If we place Visa and Base on the same strategic map, they represent two opposing yet potentially converging paths: the former embeds these new assets within the existing global card organization network, allowing users to continue using their familiar card swiping and online payment habits with minimal awareness, while the settlement layer quietly migrates to on-chain; the latter attempts to rebuild a complete entry from wallet, transaction to payment and consumption scenarios on-chain, allowing users to live in a natively on-chain world from the start. The core of the competition is not just the transaction pathways themselves, but who controls the user payment entry and identity data. The party controlling the entry often has a higher say in fee structures, value-added services, risk control rules, and even the profit-sharing systems of ecological partners, making it easier to form network effects and path dependencies. Visa's greatest moat in this competition remains its licenses, compliance capabilities, and global merchant acceptance network, which means it has long-term accumulation in regulatory interaction, risk management, and cross-border compliance, and this barrier is not easily crossed by pure technological innovation. In contrast, Base's advantages lie in its developer ecosystem and control over the on-chain native experience, allowing it to iterate product forms more quickly, integrate new application protocols, and innovate in fees, speed, and combinations in ways that traditional networks find difficult to achieve. From a realistic perspective, the more foreseeable pattern in the short term is not a simple "who replaces whom," but rather the mutual nesting and collaboration of the two paths: some users may use related assets for settlement through traditional card organization networks, while others complete payments and transactions directly at on-chain entry points like Base, with some merchants accepting card organization settlements and others embracing on-chain collections. The game surrounding entry, branding, and data has quietly unfolded in this seemingly gentle coexistence.
The Divide in User Experience and Trust Structure
Base focuses on enhancing on-chain transaction speed and reducing costs, essentially pursuing an experience where "users hardly feel they are using blockchain." For most non-technical users, they do not care whether the underlying technology is layer two scaling or another solution; they only care about whether transfers arrive in seconds, whether the operation is easy, and whether the fees are negligible. Base attempts to refine its product to fold all these technical differences beneath the interface, making participation in on-chain economic activities a smooth process akin to traditional internet apps. In contrast, Visa's integration path allows users to continue swiping familiar bank cards or completing payments on familiar e-commerce platforms, with all actions related to new assets occurring in the background during the clearing and fund allocation stages. For end cardholders, there is no need to learn new wallet concepts, manage private keys, or understand gas fees or block confirmations; they still trust the credit system built by banks, card organizations, and local regulators. The differences between crypto-native users and ordinary consumers in terms of custody methods, compliance needs, and asset sovereignty preferences are further amplified here: the former cares more about address ownership, private key custody, and the freedom to migrate across platforms at any time, while the latter is more concerned with fund security, convenience of deposits and withdrawals, and whether they can obtain legal protection in case of disputes. What truly determines the speed of penetration may be which solution finds a balance between "frictionless experience" and "retaining a certain degree of on-chain sovereignty" first: allowing users to avoid the full technical burden while not completely handing ownership back to centralized institutions. Whoever can take shape at this compromise point has a greater opportunity to gain an advantage in the next round of payment infrastructure evolution.
The Next Stage of Payment Narrative
Based on existing data and actions from various parties, it can be seen that payments priced in related assets are far smaller in volume than the traditional networks like Visa, which often reach annual payment scales in the trillions. However, they are already viewed as an emerging battlefield that cannot be ignored in the coming years by the upstream and downstream of the industry chain. On one end, Base represents the path of "first building a new entry, then constructing a network around it," hoping to form a natively on-chain super entry by aggregating transaction, payment, and consumption scenarios; on the other end, Visa embodies the strategy of "gradually embracing new assets within the old network," steadily integrating new settlement methods without overturning the existing clearing system. The timing of when these two paths will reach a true inflection point will largely depend on the clarity of the regulatory framework, merchants' willingness to adopt new settlement methods, and ordinary users' cognitive accumulation of new assets as value carriers and payment tools. These external variables are far more uncertain than the technology itself. A more cautious judgment is that for a considerable period in the foreseeable future, the market will maintain a mixed form: traditional card organization networks will continue to bear the vast majority of payment volume, while on-chain settlements will gradually increase their share in certain cross-border, specific asset, or high-frequency on-chain activity scenarios, but the pace of this increase is difficult to quantify with specific values or timelines. What truly needs attention is how changes in entry and narrative gradually influence users' payment habits, rather than attempting to derive a linear, predictable growth curve from short-term data.
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