Mastercard brings stablecoin balances into traditional banking and card payments

Mastercard is expanding its role in stablecoin payments with a new platform that lets businesses integrate digital currencies into traditional banking and card services, a move that could make it easier for companies to offer stablecoin payments without building their own infrastructure.

The service, dubbed Global Money Platform, is Mastercard’s first major integration with BVNK since it acquired the stablecoin infrastructure company in August, the payments giant announced Thursday. 

According to Mastercard, businesses can use the platform to hold and convert fiat currencies and stablecoins, offer stablecoin-linked cards and make payments directly from stablecoin balances into recipients’ local bank accounts.

The service connects to Mastercard Move, the company’s global money transfer network, which can route payments to more than 17 billion destinations, including bank accounts and cards. It also connects stablecoin balances to Mastercard’s merchant network, allowing customers to spend them with payment cards. Nuvei, Marqeta and several other fintech companies are among the first integration partners.

The launch extends Mastercard’s role beyond processing payments to providing infrastructure that financial companies can use to offer stablecoin services under their own brands. It also puts Mastercard in closer competition with Visa, which launched a platform in July that lets financial institutions hold, mint, and transfer stablecoins.

It comes as research from Standard Chartered points to growing stablecoin transaction activity, even as the circulating supplies of major tokens such as USDt and USDC have remained relatively flat this year.

Related: US accounting overhaul could make stablecoins more attractive to corporations: Tempo