Mastercard expands settlement support to USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD and other regulated stablecoins

Mastercard said it will let issuers and acquirers settle some card transactions using regulated stablecoins, adding intraday, weekend and holiday settlement options alongside fiat. For PSPs and acquirers, the practical point is simple: more ways to manage settlement liquidity and timing, and one more sign that tokenized dollars are moving into core payment plumbing.

1. On Wednesday, Mastercard said the new settlement capabilities will support both fiat currencies and onchain settlement through regulated stablecoins. The company framed the feature as a liquidity and timing tool for partners, which is the part operators will care about first: fewer constraints around when settlement happens, and more options for treasury management.
2. The stablecoin settlement option will support Circle’s USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple’s RLUSD and SoFi’s SoFiUSD. Mastercard said these stablecoins will be enabled across supported blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, Base, Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Tempo and XRPL.
3. ARQ, formerly known as DolarApp, CBW Bank, Cross River, Lead Bank and Nuvei are expected to be among the first to support stablecoin settlement optionality in the United States and Latin America, according to Mastercard. That makes the rollout relevant not just to network strategy, but to actual settlement rails that high-risk merchants and their providers can use in two markets where payout speed and liquidity control matter a lot.
4. The move comes after Mastercard secured a New York BitLicense in May, which allows its US transaction services unit to conduct regulated digital asset business activity in the state. In other words, this is not Mastercard improvising around the edges; it has the local regulatory permission it needs to keep pushing on digital asset settlement in New York.
5. Mastercard’s announcement lands in a market where stablecoin payments are clearly getting less experimental. Visa said in April that its stablecoin settlement pilot had reached a $7 billion annualized run rate, up 50% from the previous quarter, after adding five blockchains to bring its supported settlement networks to nine. Mastercard is now following the same broad direction: more networks, more chains, more settlement options.

The stablecoin market is currently valued at about $320 billion. For PSPs, acquirers and bank partners, that is the number that explains why card networks are treating stablecoin settlement as infrastructure rather than a side project.