Mastercard Launches Global Money Platform to Bring Stablecoins Into Everyday Banking and Card Payments

Mastercard is rolling out a new service that helps businesses plug stablecoins into regular banking and card systems, without having to build the technology themselves.

Mastercard Global Money Platform Features

The platform was announced Thursday and is the first major integration with BVNK since Mastercard bought the stablecoin infrastructure firm in August. Businesses can hold and convert both fiat currencies and stablecoins, issue stablecoin-linked cards and send payments straight from a stablecoin balance into a recipient’s local bank account. Nuvei, Marqeta and several other fintech companies are among the first partners to adopt it.

Mastercard Move and Merchant Network Connection

The service links to Mastercard Move, the company’s global money transfer network, which can route payments to more than 17 billion destinations, including bank accounts and cards. It also ties stablecoin balances to Mastercard’s merchant network, so customers can spend them with ordinary payment cards.

Competition With Visa in Stablecoin Payments

The launch moves Mastercard beyond processing payments and into providing infrastructure that financial firms can offer under their own brands. It also puts the company in closer competition with Visa, which introduced its own platform in July for financial institutions to hold, mint and transfer stablecoins. The timing matches research from Standard Chartered pointing to rising stablecoin transaction activity, even though the circulating supply of major tokens such as USDt and USDC has stayed fairly flat this year.