Newly expanded settlement options and stablecoin-backed cards signal a turning point for payments technology as tokenized dollars migrate from crypto rails to mainstream finance, long-shaped if not monopolized by Mastercard & Visa.
Mastercard and Visa have officially expanded their support for stablecoin settlement in early March 2026. Around the same time, both card networks deepen partnerships with crypto infrastructure players and expand their pilot programs that let banks, issuers, and fintechs settle transactions in dollar-pegged stablecoins, accelerating speed, lowering costs, and extending capabilities beyond traditional fiat rails.
At the forefront of these initiatives, Mastercard has teamed up with SoFi Technologies to enable settlement using SoFiUSD, a fully reserved U.S. dollar stablecoin issued by a federally chartered and FDIC-insured bank. This integration allows card transactions to be settled 24/7 on Mastercard’s global network — a capability that legacy systems simply can’t match, and opens the door to faster cross-border remittances and programmable payment flows.
Visa, meanwhile, is scaling stablecoin-linked cards in collaboration with Stripe’s Bridge platform. What started as pilot programs in select countries will soon be available across over 100 markets worldwide, allowing consumers and businesses to spend stablecoins at more than 175 million Visa merchant locations around the globe. On-chain settlement is made possible through partnerships with banks, like Lead Bank.
These latest moves build on both companies’ multi-year engagement with digital assets. Mastercard first began exploring tokenized currencies and blockchain pilots as early as 2021, partnering with various financial institutions in issuing decentralized finance (DeFi) cards across Europe, LatAm, the UK, and other regions.
Meanwhile, Visa has been experimenting with stablecoins since at least 2023, but started actively integrating stablecoin settlement functionality for partners and financial institutions only in late 2025, as the regulatory environment matured, with further ambitions to grow volume and institutional adoption.
The backdrop for these announcements is a rapidly expanding stablecoin ecosystem. In 2025 alone, global stablecoin transaction volumes topped an estimated $33 trillion, a year-over-year surge of more than 70%, and stablecoin market capitalization climbed above $300 billion by year’s end. USDC and USDT remain dominant, together accounting for the majority of on-chain volume, while settlement volumes tied to Visa’s programs have reached the multi-billion-dollar annualized run rates in early 2026.
Among other crypto assets, stablecoins are particularly popular, since they solve a number of persistent pain points in payments. Unlike traditional bank settlement systems that operate on business day schedules and often take days to finalize cross-border transfers, stablecoins move value instantly and continuously, supporting global commerce around the clock at a fraction of the cost. Programmability, which is the ability to embed business logic into money itself, enables automation of payroll, supply-chain financing, B2B settlement, and other complex workflows without intermediaries.
Stablecoins also offer a level of price stability absent in many other cryptocurrencies. Because they’re tied to fiat values (primarily USD but today increasingly other regionally-significant currencies like EUR), they avoid the volatility that has hampered broader crypto adoption, making them more attractive for real-world payments and savings. In emerging markets, stablecoins are increasingly used to hedge inflation and reduce remittance costs, offering savings that can surpass those provided by traditional services by a large margin.
However, not all reactions have been universally positive. Some regulators, including the European Central Bank, caution that rapid stablecoin adoption might impact traditional banking systems and monetary policy effectiveness if not carefully managed, highlighting the need for clear frameworks and oversight. For that reason, the EU, with its MiCA framework, is one of the pioneers globally in comprehensive crypto regulation terms.
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