Cryptopolitan
March 6, 2026 4:18 PM UTC

Mastercard expands card settlement with stablecoins, collaborate with Visa and Stripe to launch new stablecoin platform

Popular payments platform Mastercard has announced that it will let card issuers and its customers settle card transactions using more stablecoins across eight different blockchains. This comes alongside reports of a new stablecoin platform in the works in partnership with Visa and Stripe. The stablecoin expansion by the payments platform will support six new dollar-pegged tokens including Circle’s USDC, PayPal USD (PYUSD) and Pax Dollar (USDP) from Paxos, Ripple USD (RLUSD), Global Dollar (USDG), and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. The transactions will be made across the Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, XRPL, Canton, and Tempo blockchains, according to Mastercard’s press release. This upgrade also adds intraday settlement windows in addition to weekend and holiday processing for fiat currencies. Mastercard mentioned that both changes are intended to give partners more control over liquidity and timing, especially for cross-border payments and payouts. Rollout timeline for Mastercard stablecoin changes Initial participants of these changes will be in the United States and Latin America. ARQ (formerly DolarApp), CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank, and Nuvei will all be among these participants, according to the statement. Further expansion into other zones, continents and issuers are planned till the end of 2026. These changes come after months of positioning by the payments platform to integrate crypto payments into its infrastructure. Mastercard had secured a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in May 2026 and agreed in March to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion (an initial $1.5 billion price with an additional $300 million in performance-linked payments). Payment platforms embrace stablecoins Mastercard is not alone in working toward stablecoin integration for payments. Visa also expanded its own supported stablecoins to nine blockchains in April 2026, amounting to a $7 billion ARR (annualized run rate), representing a 50% increase from the prior quarter according to CoinMarketCap. Stripe also entered the space in late 2024 when it acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion. MoneyGram launched its own MGUSD stablecoin on Stellar on June 2, issued through the Stripe-owned Bridge, further proving the rate of increase in institutional adoption of stablecoins. The new joint stablecoin platform with Visa and Stripe Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are also close to introducing a totally new joint stablecoin platform. Coinbase is also exploring whether to participate, according to reports. None of the companies have confirmed this project publicly. The total stablecoin market is now at a combined market capitalization of almost $325 billion, according to CoinGecko data, with Tether’s USDT holding the highest share. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free .