Issuers and acquirers can now clear card transactions in regulated stablecoins on Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo and XRPL, with ARQ, CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank and Nuvei lined up as the first adopters in the US and Latin America.
Mastercard on Tuesday opened its global card-settlement network to regulated stablecoins, allowing issuers and acquirers to clear card transactions onchain across eight blockchains and adding intraday, weekend and holiday settlement cycles for the first time.
The company announced the expansion in a press release from its Purchase, New York headquarters, framing it as a move toward an “always-on” model for rails that today carry roughly a quarter of the world’s card spend.
The supported assets are Circle’s USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple’s RLUSD and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. They will be enabled across Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo and XRPL.
ARQ — formerly DolarApp — CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank and Nuvei are expected to be the first to use the optionality, starting in the US and Latin America.
Mastercard reported $10.6 trillion in gross dollar volume in 2025, according to its most recent 10-K.
The announcement collapses a separation that has held since stablecoins emerged: regulated-bank settlement runs on legacy rails operating banker’s hours, and onchain dollar movement runs around the clock on a parallel system.
Mastercard, which acquired the NYDFS BitLicense one week earlier and agreed to buy stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion this year, is folding the second system into the first.
“The next phase of stablecoin adoption is about real-world utility, especially in settlement, where timing and liquidity matter most,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president, Blockchain & Digital Assets at Mastercard, in the announcement. “By introducing intraday and weekend settlement options across our global network, we’re expanding how partners manage liquidity and operate in an always-on digital economy while maintaining the trust, resilience and safeguards they expect from Mastercard.”
The Stablecoin and Chain Mix
The six stablecoins span four regulated issuers and together cover most of the regulated US-dollar stablecoin float. USDC, Mastercard’s earliest on-chain settlement asset in select markets, holds $75.89 billion in market capitalization, per CoinGecko. Paxos-issued PYUSD sits at $2.98 billion and Ripple’s RLUSD at $1.82 billion. USDG, USDP and SoFi’s SoFiUSD round out the launch list.
The eight-chains list signals Mastercard is willing to settle on chains designed for bank-and-corporate users as well as the retail-DeFi public.
Visa’s Live Network
Visa, the other major card network with a multi-year stablecoin program, launched USDC settlement to US issuers in December 2025 over the Solana blockchain, with Cross River and Lead Bank as the initial banks.
Visa first piloted USDC settlement on Solana with Crypto.com in 2023; its stablecoin-settlement run rate had reached roughly $7 billion annualized by late April, the company said on its most recent earnings call.
Mastercard’s announcement Tuesday is materially broader on day one: six stablecoins versus Visa’s one at launch, eight chains versus Visa’s one, and an explicit commitment to weekend and holiday cycles built into the framework. The two initial banks — Cross River and Lead — are the same ones Visa launched with, an indication that the institutional banking layer for stablecoin card settlement is converging on a small set of partners.
What Could Slow the Rollout
The expanded capabilities will roll out globally “subject to regulation,” Mastercard said, and the initial deployment is constrained to “parts of the United States and Latin America.”
That phrasing leaves open the operational question that has gated every prior stablecoin-settlement deployment: how individual prudential regulators treat a bank holding intraday stablecoin balances against US-dollar liabilities. Federal regulators are working against a statutory one-year deadline under the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin framework signed in July 2025, to finalize implementing rules. The OCC’s proposed rule was published March 2 and closed for comment in May; the FDIC, Federal Reserve and Treasury have proposed companion rules. None has yet been finalized.
What Comes Next
Mastercard said additional regions, partners and regulated stablecoins will be added through 2026.
The first read on uptake will come from Cross River, Lead and Nuvei reporting how much of their existing Mastercard-acquired volume migrates into the on-chain track over the coming quarters, and from Mastercard’s next earnings call.
