MASTERCARD OPENS STABLECOIN SETTLEMENT TO ISSUERS AND ACQUIRERS ACROSS SIX BLOCKCHAINS WITH USDC PYUSD RLUSD AND SOFIUSD Mastercard announced Wednesday that it will allow issuers and acquirers to settle card-based transactions using regulated stablecoins alongside traditional fiat currencies, adding intraday, weekend, and holiday settlement to its global payments network and enabling on-chain settlement across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, and the XRP Ledger. The initial stablecoin lineup includes Circle’s USDC, PayPal’s PYUSD, Ripple’s RLUSD, Paxos’s USDG and USDP, and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. Cross River, Lead Bank, CBW Bank, ARQ (formerly DolarApp), and Nuvei are the first institutions supporting the settlement expansion in the United States and Latin America, with global rollout planned through the remainder of 2026. The move targets the structural gap in traditional card settlement, where transaction authorization is instant but interbank clearing typically occurs in delayed batches during banking hours only. The settlement expansion builds directly on Mastercard’s March 2026 definitive agreement to acquire enterprise stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, the largest acquisition of a crypto payments firm by a traditional card network to date. Mastercard also received a New York BitLicense through its subsidiary in May 2026, establishing the regulatory foundation to clear tokenized deposits and stablecoin payment flows in the United States. The company holds a Mastercard Principal Membership relationship with stablecoin card issuer Rain and has piloted stablecoin settlement across Africa and the Middle East with Yellow Card on its Multi-Token Network infrastructure. Wednesday’s announcement extends those pilots into a production settlement offering for the company’s full global issuer and acquirer base. Mastercard’s announcement arrives as card payment networks race to establish stablecoin settlement leadership. Visa expanded its own stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains in April 2026, adding Base, Polygon, Canton Network, Arc, and Tempo to existing Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Stellar support. The total dollar-pegged stablecoin supply is approaching $300 billion, with USDC holding approximately $76 billion. Mastercard said the stablecoin settlement framework preserves existing security standards, fraud safeguards, and dispute resolution processes within its network, framing the expansion as an extension of existing infrastructure rather than a parallel settlement system.