Mastercard Tests Ripple Stablecoin for Card Settlement with Gemini
Mastercard is exploring ways to settle card transactions in Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin across its network, linking XRP Ledger-backed stablecoin rails to one of the world's largest payment systems. Christian Rau, Mastercard's senior vice president for digital assets and blockchain, detailed the plan in an interview.
The firm is working with Gemini on an RLUSD settlement use case and expects the feature to go live in the first half of the year. Rau framed the effort as part of Mastercard's push to fold stablecoins into existing rails rather than run a parallel system.
He argued that stablecoins have entered the mainstream of financial services and can speed cross-border flows, pointing to Mastercard's 150 million acceptance locations and 3.8 billion cards as the core advantage behind the integration approach.