Mastercard is joining the big names that are stating their plans to address an anticipated stablecoin boom. It's signaling a willingness to work with a variety of firms to provide scale and payment technology for digital assets.
The card network said it is joining the stablecoin alliance Paxos Global Dollar Network, along with plans to integrate
Mastercard's other stablecoin-related moves include upgrading the
While
"Stablecoins are the popular new kid, literally, on the block," Alenka Grealish, an analyst at Celent, told American Banker.
Mastercard's view on stablecions
Mastercard says it currently enables consumers to spend their stablecoin balances at more than 150 million Mastercard merchant locations worldwide through partnerships with crypto firms like MetaMask, Crypto.com, OKX and Kraken. And exchanges like Binance, Bybit and Coinbase accept Mastercard for crypto purchases.
"We do this because stablecoins alone do not offer the global acceptance, security, reliability, consumer protections and scale that have made card payments trusted and preferred by billions," Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard, said in Tuesday's release. "Mastercard plays a unique role in bridging that gap, working across crypto and financial ecosystems to unlock this potential."
Stablecoins are helping solve real-world challenges, Lambert said, mentioning benefits such as reducing time and costs for cross-border remittances, enabling near-instant payouts for families, improving how content creators and gig workers get paid, and supporting B2B transactions that can be programmed to execute at a specific time or under prescribed conditions.
Do stablecoins threaten Visa and Mastercard?
Stablecoins will likely not be used for payments directly at the point of sale, but would require a conversion between traditional currency and the stablecion at both ends of the transaction. But that process could circumvent traditional card payments at the point of sale, thus draining revenue.
The potential stablecoins from
Analysts, however, said the impact of stablecoins on payment volume for Visa and Mastercard should be muted.
"Visa and Mastercard will have a key role to play even if stablecoin adoption gains ground. Being centrally situated in the payments ecosystem and a trusted party for banks, merchants and consumers, makes the networks well positioned to add value and play a critical role in driving adoption of the stablecoin ecosystem, despite beliefs that stablecoin is a risk to their business model," KBW said in an analyst note, adding it expects Visa is working on similar initiatives to Mastercard.
"Each wave of payments innovation has reaffirmed a simple truth: Consumers and merchants adopt solutions that are convenient, secure and dependable," Lambert said in the card network's release. "We don't see stablecoins disrupting this dynamic — in fact, they reinforce it. Stablecoins hold tremendous promise but should be held to that same simple but high standard. There's still work to be done to fully realize their promise."
In an email, Visa's public relations department referenced a position paper that
"In 2025, we believe that every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy," Visa said in its stablecoin position paper. "As more players in the payments ecosystem explore this powerful new technology, Visa stands ready to help our partners navigate the transformation, bringing the scale, trust and innovation needed to help build the next generation of global payments."
The hanging question, however, for all stablecoin providers is demand, Grealish said.
There is some demand in countries plagued by high inflation and select currency corridors, she said. "But [stablecoins are regarded] ambivalently in the U.S., where consumers love their credit cards and need sustainable incentives to be motivated to use stablecoins."
