Mastercard Deepens Crypto Bet Post-GENIUS Act With USDG Consortium and Stablecoin Expansion

Key Takeaways

• Mastercard has announced support for an expanded array of stablecoins.
• Alongside USDC, the card company now supports USDG, Fiserv’s recently announced FIUSD and PayPal’s PYUSD.
• The firm has also joined the stablecoin consortium behind USDG.

Card operators have been tentatively exploring stablecoins for several years now, but with the technology gaining crucial legitimacy thanks to the GENIUS Act and other advancing regulatory initiatives, adoption is starting to snowball.

In the latest development, Mastercard has thrown its support behind USDG by joining the Global Dollar Network (GDN) stablecoin consortium.

Global Dollar Network’s USDG

Launched in November 2024, USDG is an emerging stablecoin issued by Paxos—the company behind USDP, PayPal’s PYUSD and Binance’s discontinued BUSD.

While other stablecoins are oriented toward retail payments and decentralized finance, from the outset, GDN has set its sights on more institutional use cases.

Regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) under the Payment Services Act, USDG is designed for regulated financial institutions, fintechs and global commerce.

It can be embedded within business-to-business payments, remittances, trade finance, and on/off ramps with tight compliance controls.

GDN members include crypto-native companies like Kraken and Galaxy, as well as banks and payment processors such as Standard Chartered and Worldpay.

Members of the consortium are all able to mint USDG and share revenue generated from the interest on stablecoin reserves.

Mastercard Doubles Down on Stablecoins

Mastercard’s decision to join the Global Dollar Network, announced on Monday, June 23, comes as the card company deepens its exposure to stablecoins with new products and integrations.

Alongside Visa, Mastercard’s initial foray into the technology relied heavily on USDC, which powers most of the company’s stablecoin acceptance and payments capabilities.

But now, the firm will “support a growing portfolio of regulated stablecoins from issuers around the world,” including USDG, Fiserv’s recently announced FIUSD and PayPal’s PYUSD.

Mastercard’s stablecoin offering now includes Mastercard Move, a cross-border business-to-business payment solution; Mastercard One Credential, which powers crypto debit cards; and Mastercard Multi-Token Network, a blockchain platform for programmable payments and stablecoin settlement.

GENIUS Act Boosts Institutional Adoption

Since the U.S. Senate approved the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, payment giants have accelerated their various stablecoin initiatives.

On June 18, Visa announced a major expansion of its stablecoin settlement solution, which is now available to merchants across the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Fiserv’s plans to launch FIUSD alongside a new multi-stablecoin platform for banks and merchants.

Crucially, Fiserv is working with both Circle and Paxos, the two biggest names in the rapidly expanding institutional stablecoin market. (Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, has largely been shunned by Wall Street.)

The new platform will connect around 10,000 financial institutions and millions of merchants that rely on Fiserv’s infrastructure.

With some of the world’s most important payment processors actively developing new stablecoin solutions, further announcements from the likes of Adyen, Nexi, Worldpay and Stripe are likely.