The collaboration will facilitate digital trade across emerging markets by allowing acquiring institutions to get their settlement in USDC or EURC and then use those stablecoins to settle with merchants, the companies said in a Tuesday (Aug. 26) press release.
“We know that trust is essential to scale, and we are proud to play a leading role by applying our decades of experience in security and compliance to the stablecoin space,” Dimitrios Dosis, president, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mastercard, said in the release.
Circle Chief Business Officer Kash Razzaghi said in the release: “Together with Mastercard, we are advancing the role of stablecoins as a foundational tool for everyday financial activity worldwide.”
One of the first adopters of this solution is Arab Financial Services. The company’s CEO, Samer Soliman, said in the release that the new capability reduces the friction usually associated with high-volume settlements.
Another early adopter, Eazy Financial Services, found that this capability helps deliver “faster, more secure and more efficient payment solutions,” Nayef Al Alawi, the firm’s founder, managing director and CEO, said in the release.
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The new offering marks an expansion of an existing partnership between Mastercard and Circle. The companies already collaborate in the EEMEA region on crypto card solutions like Bybit and S1lkPay that use USDC to settle transactions, per the release.
Circle reported Aug. 12 that the amount of USDC in circulation surged 90% year over year to $61.3 billion as of June 30, with an additional 6.4% increase to $65.2 billion by Aug. 10. The company closed the second quarter with a 28% share of the fiat-backed stablecoin market, up 595 basis points year over year.
Mastercard said in April that it has formed several partnerships around stablecoin use, encompassing areas like wallet enablement, card issuing and acceptance; differentiated value through cards and beyond; merchant settlement; on-chain remittances; and powering more efficient payments and commerce applications.
“We believe in the potential of stablecoins to streamline payments and commerce across the value chain,” Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert said at the time in a press release.
