Visa and Mastercard moved stablecoin-linked card settlement further into traditional payment rails on September 23, but both announcements leave important commercial metrics unresolved.
Visa and Reap said they will work together to expand stablecoin-linked Visa credit-card programs beyond Asia and Latin America into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Reap will provide card authorization, processing, compliance frameworks and operational support that fintechs and business platforms can use to launch their own branded programs. Visa supplies the payment network and access to its existing merchant base; the company launching a card controls the customer-facing product and must meet local rules. The partnership is designed to support programs across more than 100 markets, but Visa and Reap did not publish a complete country list or a single global launch date.
The arrangement allows stablecoins to fund card programs, secure credit exposure or repay outstanding balances. It does not require merchants to install a separate stablecoin checkout, because cards are intended to work at more than 175 million locations that already accept Visa. Visa said its wider stablecoin business now includes more than 160 card programs and a $20 billion annualized settlement pace, up fifteenfold year over year. The annualized run-rate figure projects a recent pace across twelve months and does not mean Visa necessarily processed $20 billion during the preceding year.
Mastercard and SoFi Bank said SoFiUSD settlement is live for the bank's debit and credit card program, moving their March plan into production. SoFi expects more than $25 billion in annualized card-program volume after migration, but it has not disclosed how much has actually settled in SoFiUSD. The full-program migration remains underway, and cardholders can keep using existing cards. SoFi says merchants using its Big Business Banking platform can receive settlement funds immediately in a SoFi Bank account and access cash around the clock without holding SoFiUSD. The September release names no live outside merchant settlement customer and says discussions with large US merchants continue.
SoFi Bank, a nationally chartered bank regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, issues SoFiUSD and describes it as intended for one-for-one dollar redemption. However, SoFi's product disclosure says SoFiUSD itself is not a deposit, lacks FDIC and SIPC insurance and may be subject to delay, disruption or permanent loss. Direct redemption is available only to approved SoFi customers with separate agreements, subject to conditions and fees. The terms also exclude people and entities located in, resident in or subject to UK or European Economic Area laws from acquiring, holding, transferring or using SOFID.
Mastercard outlined a broader settlement menu in June that included regulated stablecoins alongside additional fiat timing options. It said USDC had supported early on-chain settlement in select markets and named Paxos-issued coins, RLUSD and SoFiUSD for planned support across multiple networks. The live SoFi launch puts one bank-issued coin into use within that wider strategy, but Mastercard has not disclosed the eventual traffic share of each token or said every planned pairing is live.
The key unresolved questions remain commercial rather than technical. For Visa and Reap, cardholder terms such as legal issuer, supported stablecoins, collateral control, fees, yield, default treatment and depeg handling have not been published. For Mastercard and SoFi, actual token-settled volume, outside-merchant adoption and measured access to spendable cash are still missing. The working settlement routes are clearer than their commercial scale.
