Institutions Choose Cryptos for Cross-Border Payments
Institutions have been increasingly using cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments in recent years. According to 24/7 Wall St., Mastercard opened card settlement to stablecoins across eight blockchains on June 3, and Swift launched its own blockchain ledger on July 9 with 17 banks lined up to pilot live transactions.
Ripple's XRP, Stellar's XLM, and Hedera's HBAR are among the payment cryptos targeting the institutional market. XRP bridges currencies for cross-border payments, while Stellar issues and moves stablecoins across borders. Hedera hosts tokenized assets for banks and asset managers.
However, not all institutions are using these cryptocurrencies in the same way. Mastercard chose to partner with Ripple's XRP Ledger, but its own business only processes about 0.01% of transactions through XRP. On the other hand, MoneyGram picked Stellar, launching its own dollar stablecoin natively on the network.