Cardano Partners with Mastercard to Expand Payments Business
Cardano has joined Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program to expand its payments business. The Cardano Foundation will work with Mastercard and other participants in areas such as cross-border money transfers, business-to-business transactions, and settlement.
The move is part of the blockchain track within Mastercard's program. Cardano is also pursuing AI agent-based transaction support alongside an expansion of its payments infrastructure.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has presented an agent-centric finance concept, where blockchains provide privacy, identity, payment, and control layers for AI agents. The integration of x402 payments across the Cardano mainnet and testnets aligns with this vision.
The foundation is also working on network scalability, aiming to demonstrate Leios nodes reaching 250 TxkB per second by the end of 2026.