(March 12): Mastercard Inc is recruiting more than 85 digital asset firms, payments providers and financial institutions including Circle Internet Group Inc, Binance and Gemini Space Station Inc, into a new global partnership programme designed to keep crypto payments connected to its network as stablecoins are pitched as an alternative to traditional payment rails.
The programme’s aim is to help scale digital assets and integrate them into existing payment systems, the company said in a release on Wednesday.
Card networks including Mastercard and Visa Inc are positioning themselves as bridges between digital assets and the existing payments systems by offering card programmes, global merchant acceptance and cross-border settlement to earlier stage crypto firms.
Stablecoins have been pitched as a way to cut out card networks and their associated fees. Last year, Shopify Inc partnered with Stripe Inc and Coinbase Global Inc to let merchants accept USDC, a dollar-backed stablecoin from Circle, and announced plans to offer 1% cash back to customers who pay with stablecoins. Coinbase also launched a payments platform that tout stablecoins as a payment method already outpacing legacy rails in terms of both scale and flexibility.
Mastercard and Visa, which both have stablecoin initiatives that date back to at least 2021, aren’t standing idle. They are instead betting they can make themselves indispensable to the firms pushing for stablecoin adoption in everyday payments.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
