Mastercard has announced the launch of a new crypto partner program designed to link blockchain technology directly under the global commerce infrastructure. The program brings together 85 companies across the digital asset and payments industries, including fintech giants like Binance, Circle, Gemini, and others.
Inside Mastercard’s plan
The program includes crypto exchanges, blockchain developers, fintech firms, and banks, according to the company. Participating firms will work with Mastercard to integrate blockchain-based technology with the traditional payment rails for cross-border payments.
It takes cooperation among networks, financial institutions, digital asset providers, and infrastructure players to deliver a new payments paradigm, which is why we launched our Crypto Partner Program,” their official statement said. “Participants can scale their products and services, and ensure that stablecoins and tokenized deposits can operate with the same standards of security, compliance, and reliability that people expect from any Mastercard transaction.”
The program highlights the core value that the next phase of on-chain payments will be built through collaboration. According to reports, Mastercard’s network links banks and users from over 200 countries and territories. It also gives partners access to forums where they collaborate with others in the ecosystem of financial institutions and merchants.
What this means for Altcoins
Users raised questions to Grok AI on the company’s official X post, asking about the impact this program would have on various altcoins. Grok’s insights said that the move was a positive sign for the altcoins as well as stablecoin adoption.
Competitors work towards similar goals
Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement pilot with Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure platform, authorizing participating banks to settle card payment obligations with Visa using stablecoins on supported blockchain networks.
Bridge-enabled cards linked to stablecoin are currently available in 18 countries and are expected to expand to over 100 countries across Europe and MENA by the end of the year.
Popular crypto wallets like Phantom and MetaMask are using cards to allow their consumers to spend their stablecoins on their purchases.
“Expanding our work with Bridge gives us one more way to bring the speed, transparency, and programmability of stablecoins directly into the settlement process,” says Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto, Visa.
TradFi and crypto converge in global payments
Both Visa and Mastercard will explore how card issuers and acquirers can settle transactions with Mastercard using the stablecoin SoFiUSD. According to reports, the move could allow money to move faster in cross-border remittances and business-to-business (B2B) payments.
Galileo, SoFi’s technology platform, will be one of the first to give its clients and their issuing banks the option to settle transactions using SoFiUSD. The Mastercard Multi-Token Network is also expected to support the stablecoin for better interoperability between digital assets and traditional money.
