Mastercard Unveils Continuous Payment Settlement Using Regulated Stablecoins

Mastercard has introduced a significant upgrade to its settlement infrastructure, enabling continuous and automated payment flows. The new system allows intraday, weekend, and holiday settlements using regulated stablecoins, such as USDC, PYUSD, RLUSD, USDG, USDP, and SoFiUSD.

This move is part of Mastercard's broader effort to reduce reliance on traditional banking schedules and improve the speed at which financial institutions can reconcile payments. By integrating regulated stablecoins into its settlement layer, Mastercard enables faster value transfers across different blockchains while maintaining compliance and stability requirements for financial institutions.

The Stellar blockchain plays a crucial role in this upgrade, enabling continuous and automated payment flows that react in real-time to transaction triggers. This allows settlement rules to be built directly into financial workflows, making the process faster and easier to manage.