Key Takeaways
- Visa and Mastercard have both launched new fiat-to-stablecoin payout solutions.
- Stablecoin payouts could streamline how global digital platforms pay users.
- They are also viewed as a way to increase financial inclusion.
Within hours of Visa launching its stablecoin payout pilot, Mastercard followed suit, announcing a fiat-to-wallet payout solution of its own.
To power the near feature, Mastercard has tapped the fintech startup Thunes, whose global infrastructure spans bank rails, card networks, mobile wallets, digital assets, and more.
Card Giants Back Stablecoin Payouts
Visa and Mastercard’s latest stablecoin integrations are functionally the same, adding real-time payouts to stablecoin wallets as an option for users of their respective global networks, Visa Direct and Mastercard Move.
“We already enable transfers in 150 currencies to over 10 billion endpoints — including accounts, cards, and cash,” observed Mastercard’s Global Head of Transfer Solutions, Pratik Khowala, in a statement shared with CCN.
Now “we’re adding stablecoin wallets to that mix,” he added.
“It’s all about giving end-users more choice and unlocking new possibilities for banks and payment service providers.”
Payments for the Platform Economy
Stablecoin payouts are especially attractive for business models that require paying users in multiple countries.
Gig economy platforms, creator networks, and digital marketplaces operate across borders.
When they rely on legacy systems like SWIFT, riders, content creators, and vendors often have to wait days to receive payments.
Major platform operators have already started to explore stablecoin payouts on their own initiative.
Meta is considering adopting stablecoins for creator payouts to avoid the high costs associated with fiat transfers.
Meanwhile, Chinese retail giants Alibaba and JD.com both have ambitions to launch their own stablecoin, posing the prospect that they could use them to pay vendors on their respective marketplaces.
Stablecoins and Financial Inclusion
In their announcements, both Visa and Mastercard alluded to the greater accessibility of stablecoin wallets vis-à-vis bank accounts.
In markets where bank account ownership is low, stablecoin payouts could “reduce barriers to promote greater financial inclusion,” Mastercard claimed.
The emphasis on financial inclusion echoes an argument frequently made by stablecoin issuers.
As Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino put it:
“The traditional financial system left behind three billion people in the world that are called underbanked or unbanked […] With stablecoins and USDT, we gave them for the first time in their lives the ability to have access to payments.”
Similarly, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire suggested stablecoins can be “a solution to the problem of financial inclusion, increasing financial access, including banking the unbanked and making payments and remittances more low-cost and accessible.”
James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
