Mastercard Taps Ripple's RLUSD for Card Settlements with Gemini

Mastercard is exploring ways to settle card transactions in Ripple's USD (RLUSD) across its network. The company has teamed up with Gemini on a pilot project that aims to settle card flows in RLUSD, a stablecoin launched by Ripple in December 2024.

Christian Rau, Mastercard's senior vice president for digital assets and blockchain, expects the feature to go live in the first half of this year. He framed the effort as part of Mastercard's push to integrate stablecoins into its existing rails rather than running a parallel system.

Rau argued that stablecoins have entered the mainstream of financial services and can speed up cross-border flows. He pointed out that Mastercard has around 150 million acceptance locations and 3.8 billion cards, which is the core advantage behind the integration approach.