Mastercard (NYSE: MA), one of the world's largest card payment service companies, has made a big push into stablecoins over the past five years. Let's see why it's so bullish on the cryptocurrency, and what its expansion might mean for the broader crypto market. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable fiat currency, such as the U.S. dollar or the Euro.
They're usually backed by cash and Treasuries, can be held without a bank account, and facilitate faster, cheaper settlements than conventional bank transfers. This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia.
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By treating stablecoins as native settlement currencies alongside fiat currencies, Mastercard can accelerate its cross-border disbursements, treasury operations, and merchant payouts. Integrating those stablecoin settlements into its own framework also protects its customers with the same fraud checks and dispute-resolution tools as its card-payments network. In 2021, Mastercard joined a pilot program to test Circle's (NYSE: CRCL) USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC) stablecoin for settling financial transactions.
Over the following years, it launched a full suite of stablecoin settlement tools, launched crypto-linked cards, and facilitated on-chain remittances. It deepened its partnership with Circle to bring its USDC and EURC (CRYPTO: EURC) stablecoin settlements to more countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It also partnered with Thunes, a global payout network, to integrate Mastercard Move (its global money transfer tools) into stablecoin wallets in more than 130 countries.
Earlier this year, Mastercard launched continuous intraday and weekend card settlements for regulated stablecoins. In August, it acquired the enterprise stablecoin infrastructure platform BVNK to bolster its cross-border payment pipelines, and it partnered with Borderless.xyz and several regional fintechs to pilot a single-audit compliance model for stablecoin transfers. Mastercard's bullishness on stablecoins won't boost the value of leading stablecoins like USDC or EURC, since they're designed to track their underlying fiat currencies.
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