Overview
- On Wednesday, June 3, Mastercard announced it will support six regulated U.S. dollar stablecoins at launch: USDC, PYUSD, USDG, USDP, RLUSD and SoFiUSD.
- Mastercard said issuers and acquirers can use those tokens to settle transactions intraday, on weekends and on public holidays while existing fiat settlement processes remain available.
- The stablecoin option will operate across multiple public blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, XRPL, Canton and Tempo, giving partners a choice of rails for liquidity and reconciliation.
- Mastercard’s U.S. unit MTS US has obtained a New York BitLicense and the company is integrating stablecoin infrastructure through its BVNK acquisition while initial pilots will roll out with Cross River, Lead Bank, CBW Bank, ARQ and Nuvei in the United States and Latin America.
- The move could speed cross-border payouts and reduce liquidity gaps for banks but will draw regulator and bank scrutiny over custody, compliance and fraud controls; separate reports that Stripe, Visa and Mastercard are building a joint stablecoin platform with possible Coinbase involvement remain based on anonymous sources and are unconfirmed.