Mastercard and Borderless.xyz Team on Cross-Border Stablecoin Payments

Mastercard launched a partnership with stablecoin infrastructure network Borderless.xyz, according to a Wednesday (Aug. 5) press release.

The collaboration will examine how Mastercard Crypto Credential’s standards-based framework can support trusted interactions in cross-border stablecoin payments, per the release.

“Stablecoins are increasingly being used to move value across borders, creating new opportunities for faster and more efficient payments,” the release said. “As adoption grows, participants need trusted ways to understand who they are interacting with and whether counterparties have met appropriate standards and requirements.”

With this project, the two companies will look at how Mastercard Crypto Credential can address that challenge by offering “assurance signals” that participants can integrate into their approval, compliance and risk processes, according to the release.

“One of the biggest friction points for stablecoin payment operators isn’t the payments,” Borderless.xyz Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Lehtiniitty said in the release. “It’s that compliance doesn’t scale the same way the network does. Every new provider means starting the verification process over. Correspondent banking solved this decades ago: originating compliance trusted downstream, no re-execution at every counterparty. Mastercard is applying that model to digital asset payments. Borderless.xyz is the network it runs through.”

The project brings together many of Borderless.xyz’s network participant companies, many of which graduated from Mastercard Start Path, the company’s startup engagement program, according to the release.

“These partners will leverage Mastercard Crypto Credential as some of the first stablecoin payment operators to run on the single-audit compliance model at network scale,” the release said.

Meanwhile, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “From Asset to Everyday Money: Making Digital Currencies Spendable” found that stablecoins’ role in transforming both how payments move and how liquidity is managed is allowing companies to optimize deployable cash.

“As digital currencies become easier to move through wallets, cards and established payment networks, they are also becoming easier for businesses to hold, allocate and redeploy,” PYMNTS reported Monday (Aug. 3). “The deeper opportunity is therefore not simply faster settlement. It is the conversion of corporate liquidity from a static balance sheet asset into programmable working capital. This does not mean companies will hand control of their balance sheets to software. It means more treasury policies could become executable rules rather than periodic instructions.”