Western Union and Shinhan Card Double Down on Solana as Token Slumps Near Yearly Low

Western Union launches stablecoin on Solana, Shinhan Card integrates payments, yet SOL token languishes near $83 amid macro headwinds.

The gap between Solana’s expanding real-world utility and its flagging market price has rarely been wider. Within the span of a week, two major financial institutions—one a 175-year-old payments giant, the other a South Korean card issuer serving 28 million customers—have placed strategic bets on the Solana blockchain. Yet the SOL token continues to trade near its 52-week trough, weighed down by macro headwinds and fading institutional ETF demand.

Western Union has accelerated the launch of its own dollar-pegged stablecoin, the US Dollar Payment Token (USDPT), to April 24. CEO Devin McGranahan confirmed the timeline during the company’s quarterly earnings call, noting the project is ahead of schedule. The fully reserved digital currency, issued by regulated custodian Anchorage Digital Bank, will run exclusively on Solana. The choice was driven by cost: the network’s median transaction fee sits well below one US cent.

The move marks a fundamental shift in how Western Union settles payments internally. The company has long relied on the SWIFT interbank system, which can take several business days to clear and grinds to a halt on weekends and holidays. With USDPT, settlements between Western Union and its global network of agents will happen in real time, around the clock. Customers will be able to convert the stablecoin into local fiat currency at hundreds of thousands of physical locations worldwide.

Western Union is also building a parallel digital infrastructure that connects crypto wallets directly to its branch network. A Visa prepaid card, slated for later in 2026, will automatically convert USDPT into the local currency at the point of sale. The company frames this as a hedge for clients in high-inflation economies such as Argentina and Turkey.

Across the Pacific, Shinhan Card has signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate stablecoin payments over Solana. The partnership builds on a successful proof-of-concept last year and will expand into a broader pilot later in 2024, incorporating self-custodial wallets and hybrid finance models that blend traditional banking with decentralized protocols. The goal is to enable regulated, everyday transactions between the card issuer’s millions of users and merchants.

The two institutional endorsements come as Circle continues to flood the Solana ecosystem with liquidity. The stablecoin issuer minted an additional 500 million USDC on the network Wednesday, pushing the weekly issuance volume past $3 billion. Solana now holds nearly 10% of all circulating USDC supply. Analysts point to the network’s low transaction costs as the primary magnet for institutional capital. The effect is visible in user growth: Solana added 180,000 new active USDC addresses in the two days leading up to the Shinhan announcement.

Despite these developments, the SOL token has been unable to escape the broader market gloom. It currently changes hands at roughly $83, down 34% since the start of the year. Monthly inflows into Solana ETFs have been sliding for six months and fell to just $40 million in April—the weakest figure since the products launched.

Technical indicators paint a grim near-term picture. The relative strength index sits near 32, deep in oversold territory. The price is hovering just above the 52-week low of $77.74. A break below that level could trigger further selling pressure. If the support holds, however, the growing roster of blue-chip network users—from Western Union to Shinhan Card to PayPal and Fiserv—may eventually provide the foundation for a bottom.