Mastercard collaborated with the Australian stablecoin platform Stables to allow retail customers in the APAC region to spend their stablecoins
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Mastercard announced a collaboration with the Australian platform Stables that integrates a stablecoin-only wallet with a payment card supported by Mastercard.
The integration will allow retail customers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to spend their stablecoins anywhere Mastercard is accepted — both online and in physical locations. Stables offers a digital wallet that stores balances in the USDC stablecoin. The attached payment card will enable users to save and spend the USD Coin, converting it into fiat and settling the digital currency on Mastercard’s network.
Although Stables’ proprietary settlement engine processes all payments using USDC, the wallet will accept deposits in a number of stablecoins, including BUSD and USDT. Besides crypto assets, users can also top up their balances using bank transfers, direct debit and other traditional payment means. All the deposits will be automatically converted into USDC at no extra cost.
The card will be accessible through the Stables digital app via mobile wallets. Reportedly, Stables will issue Mastercard prepaid cards through Marqeta. Marqeta’s Just-in-Time Funding funding feature will not require users to pre-load balances — as it happens with many other crypto-enabled prepaid cards.
The wallet integration will become available for Stables users in the second quarter of 2023. The digital stablecoin-linked card will be initially available in Australia with planned expansion towards Europe, the US, the UK and most of the Asia Pacific region.
Therefore, except for initial deposits and withdrawals in the Australian dollar, later planned fiat integrations include the U.S. dollar, euro, the British pound, as well as local currencies from APAC, Latin America and Africa.
