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Mastercard and Visa both debuted new stablecoin infrastructure deals on Wednesday, marking these card giants' latest bids to deepen their network experiments centered around crypto.
For its part, Mastercard is trialing its Crypto Credential system with Borderless, while Visa has joined forces with zerohash to bring more stablecoin capabilities into Visa Direct.
What's the Scoop?
- Mastercard's move: Mastercard is proceeding with tests of its Crypto Credential framework, a standardized way to verify participants in onchain transactions for compliance purposes, to see how it operates across Borderless's stablecoin network, which spans +100 countries and +15 licensed providers.
- Visa's angle: Businesses using Visa Direct, a network spanning over 18 billion endpoints in more than 195 countries, will be able to hold stablecoin balances to fund payouts and settle with merchants around the clock, with zerohash serving as the compliance and technical backbone behind the integration.
- Same direction: The two advances reflect diverging strategies aimed at the same prize. Mastercard has leaned on acquisitions (its $1.8B purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK closed this week) plus compliance tooling, while Visa has built out platform services, like its own Visa Stablecoin Platform, and scaled its settlement pilot to a $7B annualized run rate across nine blockchains.
- Shared ground: Both networks are founding validators on Circle's Arc blockchain and members of the Open Standard consortium behind Open USD, a shared stablecoin with free minting and redemption launching later this year, showing that these powerhouses have no problem cooperating on shared industry rails even as they compete on distribution.
- Zerohash's own arc: Founded in 2017, Zerohash nearly ended up under Mastercard's ownership before that acquisition attempt fell apart. The company instead raised $104M in a round led by Interactive Brokers and became the first MiCA-licensed firm in Europe to also secure Electronic Money Institution status.
