Mastercard expands stablecoin settlement to include Ripple's RLUSD

Mastercard announced on June 3 that it is expanding its global settlement infrastructure to support on-chain settlement using regulated stablecoins, including Ripple's RLUSD. This enhancement allows card transactions to settle 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. The initial rollout supports six regulated stablecoins: Circle's USDC, PayPal's PYUSD, Paxos-issued USDG and USDP, Ripple's RLUSD, and SoFi's SoFiUSD. Settlement will operate across eight blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, the XRP Ledger, Canton, and Tempo. Mastercard's US subsidiary, MTS US, has received a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services to facilitate this expansion. The company is also acquiring BVNK, a firm specializing in stablecoin payments infrastructure. Initial deployments are targeting the United States and Latin America, with global expansion planned through 2026. This development allows issuers and acquirers to choose stablecoin settlement on-chain as an alternative to traditional banking rails, operating in parallel, aiming to remove friction caused by banking hours and holidays in global payments. Ripple views RLUSD's inclusion as a validation for regulated stablecoins built for institutional payment flows.