Payment giant Mastercard has announced a partnership with Circle, Paxos, and Nuvei. This collaboration enables 150 million merchants in its network to accept stablecoins, regardless of the customer’s payment method.
Today, we announced our end-to-end capabilities to support stablecoins, ensuring payments can be made or received using them — anytime, anywhere. Alongside proven leaders across Web3, finance and fintech, we’re empowering consumers and businesses to use stablecoins as easily as… pic.twitter.com/6uSpMlNK9z
— Mastercard News (@MastercardNews) April 28, 2025
The company has also launched a crypto debit card in collaboration with the exchange OKX. According to Mastercard’s Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert, this creates a “comprehensive approach”: users spend stablecoins, and merchants receive them.
Representatives of the payment giant noted that “stablecoins” help to speed up and reduce the cost of payments. According to a press release, Mastercard is already working with Ondo Finance, JPMorgan Chase, and Standard Chartered to advance settlements using tokenized assets.
The stablecoin market continues to grow, with its capitalization reaching $230 billion (+54% over the year). USDT and USDC account for 90% of the volume. The number of active wallets has increased by 50% over the year, according to data from Artemis and Dune.
The issuer of USDC, Circle, has received approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market to operate as a financial services provider.
Earlier in April, Mastercard teamed up with the exchange Kraken to issue physical and digital debit crypto cards.