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Tag: Mastercard

  • Visa gets a Beijing green light, UPI’s fee waits for Diwali, and stablecoins reach the payout rails

    ★  Theme of the week

    Networks crossing into new territory

    Visa got the go-ahead to prepare a domestic card-clearing business in China. Visa and Mastercard both moved stablecoins from pilots into production payout products. India blinked on charging merchants for large UPI payments. And in Washington, the swipe-fee fight got a presidential endorsement.

    1

    Visa Direct stablecoin prefunding goes into production

    On 15 October, Visa said businesses can now prefund Visa Direct payouts with USDC rather than fiat, with Inyo Global as the first enabler and payouts reaching more than 180 countries. Vira Platonova said: “The next chapter for stablecoins is adoption” (Visa).

    ➜ So what?
    Prefunding ties up working capital in every corridor, so a 24/7 dollar token is a practical treasury win, not a crypto bet.
    2

    Mastercard and BVNK launch a Global Money Platform

    This is the first integration since Mastercard acquired BVNK in August. It combines multi-currency fiat and stablecoin accounts, stablecoin-linked cards and Mastercard Move payouts in one platform (BVNK).

    ➜ So what?
    Visa and Mastercard launched comparable stablecoin products on the same day, so this is now a product race, not an experiment.
    3

    TerraPay plugs a Bahraini bank into wallets via Swift

    National Bank of Bahrain will use TerraPay’s network, which accepts Swift ISO 20022 messages, to reach what TerraPay says are more than 12 billion bank accounts, wallets and local payment endpoints (TerraPay).

    ➜ So what?
    Banks can reach wallets without building new connections, which keeps correspondent banking relevant in an instant-payments world.

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    4

    Pix passes 1 billion keys

    Brazil’s central bank data, reported on 9 October, show more than 1 billion registered Pix keys across about 170 million users. Random keys lead with 526 million. In September, 7.1 billion transactions worth R$3.2 trillion passed through the instant payment system (Folha de S.Paulo).

    ➜ So what?
    Random keys outnumber phone, CPF and email keys combined, which suggests users prefer not to hand out personal identifiers.
    5

    US bank rails keep adding tokens

    Digital Transactions’ 14 October briefs include Cross River integrating Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and a Cliq–Vast Bank ACH deal. Accertify also found that agentic checkout is still under 1% of transactions (Digital Transactions).

    ➜ So what?
    Agentic commerce is still mostly a conference topic, while stablecoins are quietly getting bank plumbing.

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    6

    Visa and Mastercard ask the court to approve their merchant settlement

    In a 14 October filing, the networks described objectors to their US interchange settlement as a “vocal minority” in a class of more than 12 million merchants. The final approval hearing is on 16 November (Payments Dive).

    ➜ So what?
    Approval would set US card-acceptance economics for years, which is why opponents are pushing for legislation instead (see Regulation).

    Visa’s China opening is this week’s biggest card story; see the Asia-Pacific section and the deep dive.

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    7

    China approves Visa to prepare a yuan clearing business

    On 13 October, the PBOC approved Visa Information Technology (Beijing) to prepare a bank card clearing institution, with one year to get ready (Chinese Embassy / Xinhua; Caixin).

    ➜ So what?
    It is a route into domestic RMB card clearing for a wholly foreign-owned network, which Yicai calls a first.
    8

    UPI merchant fees deferred until after Diwali

    On 13 October, NPCI said the planned merchant discount rate on select UPI merchant payments will apply “immediately post Diwali”, with the date to be notified (NPCI; Business Standard). The proposed structure is 0.4% on P2M payments above ₹2,000, capped at ₹300, with merchants receiving under ₹1 lakh a month exempt (Indian Express). UPI handled 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹29.37 trillion in September, about 802 million a day (The Hindu).

    ➜ So what?
    Payments above ₹2,000 are about 4% of P2M volume but roughly two-thirds of value, so the delay pushes back the first real revenue line for UPI’s operators.
    9

    QRIS goes racing

    Bank Indonesia logged 200 cross-border QRIS transactions at the Mandalika MotoGP on 9–11 October (Antara).

    ➜ So what?
    A small number, but events are where tourists first try a local QR scheme.

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    10

    Trump backs the Credit Card Competition Act

    On 12 October, President Trump posted that Senator Roger Marshall “is working tirelessly to pass the Credit Card Competition Act, in order to stop the out of control Swipe Fee ripoff!” (NACS).

    ➜ So what?
    Routing mandates now have the White House behind them just as the networks seek court approval for their settlement, which raises the stakes on both tracks.

    Visa’s China approval and India’s UPI fee deferral, both covered above, were the week’s other big policy moves.

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    11

    Airtel Money listed in London on 14 October under the ticker AMC, with 2.7 billion shares admitted (Investegate).

    ➜ So what?
    GCash follows in Manila on 20 October, so mobile money is having its public-markets moment.
    12

    Ramp raised $1.85 billion at a $60 billion valuation, led by Dragoneer. It reports more than $2 billion in annualised revenue and $275 billion in annualised purchase volume (PR Newswire).

    ➜ So what?
    Corporate cards plus AI finance tools are now valued as a platform, not as a card programme.
    13

    Payward, Kraken’s parent, agreed to acquire Saldo Finance and its Saldo Bank unit, and Nuvei received a South African approval (Digital Transactions).

    ➜ So what?
    Crypto exchanges are buying banking licences to own the fiat side.
    14

    Fragment raised $12 million in a round led by FirstMark (Digital Transactions).

    ➜ So what?
    Investors are still funding payments infrastructure tooling.

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    📖  Word of the week

    MDR

    The merchant discount rate (MDR) is the fee a merchant pays, usually as a percentage of the transaction, to accept a digital payment. It is shared among the acquirer, the issuer and the network or scheme operator. UPI merchant payments have been free for merchants, and this week’s deferral shows how hard it is to reintroduce a fee once a rail has been free (NPCI).

    💡  Payment fact of the week
     

    In September 1958, Bank of America mailed 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericards to residents of Fresno, California, in what became known as the “Fresno drop”. The programme was renamed Visa in 1976 (Wikipedia). Sixty-eight years later, that brand has a ticket to clear yuan in Beijing, pending a licence.

    Compiled from public sources dated within the week covered. Not investment advice.

  • When the lights go out: Mastercard’s offline mandate, a £700m interchange claim and Canada’s bank-light real-time rail

    ★  Theme of the week

    Resilience and who pays for the rails

    After Sibos, a quieter but revealing week. Mastercard made offline capability compulsory in Europe and framed it as resilience. UK merchants went back to court over what crossing the Channel online costs them. Canada’s long-awaited instant rail is heading for a launch without its biggest banks. The common thread: who controls the rails, and who pays when they fail or get pricier.

    1

    UK merchants bring a £700m claim over UK–EEA interchange

    A collective action filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on 8 October seeks about £700 million (roughly €800 million) from Visa and Mastercard on behalf of about 126,000 UK businesses. It targets the post-Brexit rise in card-not-present interchange on UK–EEA transactions, from 0.2% to 1.15% for debit and from 0.3% to 1.5% for credit. Ann Pope is the proposed class representative, funded by Elm Claims. Mastercard said: “We strongly disagree with the basis of this claim” (Law Gazette; The Paypers).

    ➜ So what?
    Merchants are no longer waiting on regulators: the price of cross-border card acceptance is now a question for the courts.
    2

    Getnet offers one integration for Europe

    On 6 October, Santander’s Getnet launched a Single Entry Point covering more than 30 European countries, including local methods such as Bizum and MB WAY, with 20 settlement currencies and payouts to 140 countries (Santander).

    ➜ So what?
    Bank-owned acquirers are competing with Adyen and Stripe on the same promise: local methods everywhere through one integration.
    3

    Yellow Card launches multi-currency business accounts

    On 8 October, the Africa-focused stablecoin firm launched Global Accounts giving businesses named USD, GBP and EUR accounts, with reach to more than 190 countries (Citi Newsroom).

    ➜ So what?
    Stablecoin firms are now competing on the fiat accounts around the token, the part customers actually see.

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    4

    Canada’s Real-Time Rail may launch without the Big Six

    BetaKit reported on 8 October that none of Canada’s six largest banks is expected in the first phase of the Real-Time Rail, targeted for Q4 2026, while the finance department aims to have all major institutions on board by summer 2027. Koho’s Daniel Eberhard called a launch without them “kind of performative” (BetaKit).

    ➜ So what?
    Canada is the only G7 country without an instant rail, and a launch without the big banks risks an empty network.
    5

    Mollie relaunches pay by bank

    Mollie rebuilt Pay by Bank on GoCardless, starting in the Netherlands, with access to more than 2,500 banks and a checkout cut from five steps to three. The rest of Europe follows in 2027 (Mollie).

    ➜ So what?
    Pay by bank lives or dies on checkout steps, and three is close to a card.

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    6

    Mastercard makes offline payments mandatory in Europe

    On 8 October, Mastercard said all new cards in Europe must support offline payments from February 2027, and new and replacement terminals from May 2027. Transactions up to €200 can be approved locally (Mastercard; heise). More in the deep dive.

    ➜ So what?
    Resilience is becoming a scheme rule, not a nice-to-have, and that is a strong argument for cards in the debate over Europe’s payment sovereignty.

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    7

    GCash’s parent prices a record IPO

    On 2 October, Mynt priced its IPO at ₱6.60 a share: ₱53.0 billion gross, or up to ₱60.9 billion with the overallotment, which Mynt calls the largest in Philippine history. Listing as GCASH is set for 20 October (Mynt).

    ➜ So what?
    With Airtel Money also listing, mobile-money wallets are being valued like infrastructure.
    8

    Visa: Asia-Pacific is curious about stablecoins but unsure what they are

    A Visa survey of 14,250 consumers in 14 markets found that 46% are likely to use stablecoins within five years, against 16% who had used them in the past year. Of the 66% who are aware of stablecoins, only 6% understood them accurately (Visa).

    ➜ So what?
    Interest outruns understanding, so whoever makes stablecoins feel like a normal card payment wins.
    9

    Hong Kong and Malaysia align

    Following an HKMA–Bank Negara Malaysia meeting on 2 October, the two central banks agreed workstreams on stablecoins, RTGS connectivity and a CMU–RENTAS link (HKMA).

    ➜ So what?
    Asian central banks keep wiring up bilaterally.
    10

    RBI hikes and pushes data interoperability

    On 7 October, the RBI raised the repo rate by 25bp to 5.50% and moved to a “calibrated tightening” stance (RBI). It also announced Account Aggregator interoperability measures, to be implemented by 31 December 2026 (RBI).

    ➜ So what?
    Dearer money tightens conditions for India’s lending-led fintechs just as the data rails they rely on are being opened up.

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    11

    Rain applies for a national trust bank

    On 5 October, stablecoin card issuer Rain applied to the OCC for Rain National Trust Bank. The bank would provide custody, reserve management for GENIUS Act issuers, and stablecoin issuance and redemption, but would take no deposits and make no loans. Brandon Soto, a former Square Financial Services CFO, is the proposed CEO (PR Newswire).

    ➜ So what?
    The trust charter is becoming the standard regulatory home for stablecoin infrastructure firms.

    A thin week for policy otherwise; see the CAT claim and Mastercard’s mandate above.

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    12

    NEOPAY to acquire 65% of noon payments, expanding into Saudi Arabia and Egypt, subject to approvals (Gulf News).

    ➜ So what?
    Regional processors are buying scale in MENA’s largest markets.
    13

    Anchorage Digital acquired Routable, a payouts platform reaching 220+ countries, to combine stablecoin issuance with fiat distribution (Anchorage).

    ➜ So what?
    Crypto firms are buying the last mile of fiat.
    14

    Noah closed its seed round at $38 million after an extra $16 million, citing revenue up 538% year to date (GlobeNewswire).

    ➜ So what?
    Seed rounds of this size show the appetite for stablecoin payouts.
    15

    TrueLayer raised $27 million led by CDP Venture Capital to build a Milan hub (Tech.eu).

    ➜ So what?
    Open banking providers are building local hubs market by market.

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    📖  Word of the week

    offline authorisation

    Offline authorisation is when a card terminal approves a payment without contacting the issuer in real time. The chip and terminal apply risk rules locally, such as amount limits and counters of consecutive offline transactions, and the payment is cleared once connectivity returns. The floor limit is the amount above which a transaction must go online for approval. Mastercard’s new European rule sets local approval at up to €200 (Mastercard).

    💡  Payment fact of the week
     

    Before offline chips there was the imprinter: the “zip-zap” or “knuckle buster” that pressed an embossed card onto carbon-copy slips. Used from the 1950s and 60s, imprinters were replaced by electronic terminals in the 1980s and 90s but survived for years as an outage backup (Wikipedia). Resilience used to be made of carbon paper.

    Compiled from public sources dated within the week covered. Not investment advice.

  • Stablecoins hit the plumbing: OUSD goes live, Swift’s ledger runs, Australia bans surcharges

    ★  Theme of the week

    The incumbents take over the stablecoin plumbing

    At Sibos in Miami, the incumbents’ answer to stablecoins was not “no” but “yes, through us”. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase switched on a shared dollar token. Swift showed its ledger carrying live tokenised deposits. Lloyds settled with Visa in USDC over a weekend. Meanwhile, Australia made the most visible change of the week for consumers: card surcharges are gone.

    1

    Swift’s ledger is live and its consumer scheme is scaling

    Opening Sibos on 28 September, Swift said most of the 17 first-mover banks on its blockchain-based ledger have now used it for 24/7 tokenised-deposit payments in five currencies (EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD). It also said more than 100 institutions are live or going live on its consumer payments framework (Swift). A pay-by-alias proof of concept has 14 institutions, including BBVA and DBS (The Fintech Times).

    ➜ So what?
    Swift is casting itself as the interoperability layer for tokenised money rather than the incumbent that tokenised money disrupts.
    2

    Lloyds and Visa settle $750,000 in USDC

    In a seven-day live pilot, Lloyds used USDC bought through Archax to settle $750,000 of payment obligations with Visa. Funds reached Visa in under an hour, including at the weekend (The Block).

    ➜ So what?
    Weekend settlement between a bank and a card network is the banking-hours problem stablecoins claim to solve, now tested with live money.
    3

    Europe’s wallets agree to talk to each other

    Bancomat, Bizum, EPI (Wero), SIBS (MB WAY) and Vipps MobilePay have set up the European Network for Payments, a Madrid-based joint entity in which they are equal shareholders. Together they reach about 130 million users in 13 countries. The rollout starts with cross-border P2P, then moves to e-commerce and point of sale (Vipps MobilePay; SIBS).

    ➜ So what?
    Europe is stitching national champions together instead of building one pan-European wallet, a faster route to scale against the card schemes.

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    4

    Fiserv puts a bank stablecoin into production

    On 1 October, Fiserv said its Digital Asset Platform is live. The first use case is Bank of North Dakota’s dollar-backed Roughrider Coin, for payments between North Dakota institutions. VersaBank is the issuer and Fireblocks provides the infrastructure (Fiserv). The pilot starts with four institutions (Dakota News Network).

    ➜ So what?
    Distribution through a core processor matters more than the token: if it works in North Dakota, Fiserv has thousands of banks to switch on.

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    5

    Visa: stablecoin cards are going to work

    Visa said about 17% of stablecoin-linked card volume so far in FY26 came from business and commercial programmes. It now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked programmes, and their volume is up nearly 200% year on year (Visa).

    ➜ So what?
    Cards are becoming the spending end of stablecoin balances, which keeps interchange in the picture.
    6

    Mastercard targets the supplier-acceptance problem

    Mastercard’s new Advanced B2B Analytics uses AI “acceptance propensity scoring” to show issuers which suppliers are likely to take commercial cards. Absa and Emirates NBD are the first partners (Finextra).

    ➜ So what?
    Supplier acceptance, not buyer appetite, is the bottleneck in commercial cards.

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    7

    Australia’s surcharge ban is live

    Since 1 October, Australian businesses can no longer surcharge Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or Amex payments. Weekend and public-holiday surcharges are not affected, and the RBA is also lowering interchange caps (business.gov.au).

    ➜ So what?
    Card costs now go into shelf prices, so expect merchants to push harder on least-cost routing and acquirer pricing.
    8

    Japan tests stablecoins in trade settlement

    On 29 September, Japan’s FSA approved a Payment Innovation Project trial of stablecoin settlement for trade transactions. It is led by TradeWaltz with NTT Data and the three megabanks (TradeWaltz).

    ➜ So what?
    Japan’s megabanks are approaching stablecoins through trade finance, the least glamorous and most paper-heavy corner of cross-border payments.
    9

    QRIS keeps expanding

    On 25 September, Bank Indonesia signed a payments MoU with Timor-Leste’s central bank. Cross-border QRIS already links six countries, and foreign visitors had made 17.8 million QRIS transactions worth IDR 6.2 trillion by the end of August (CNA).

    ➜ So what?
    Indonesia is building a regional QR network one bilateral deal at a time.

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    10

    The UK opens its crypto gateway

    The FCA’s authorisation gateway for crypto firms opened on 30 September and closes on 28 February 2027. The regime takes effect on 25 October 2027 (FCA).

    ➜ So what?
    UK stablecoin and crypto payment firms finally have dates to plan around.
    11

    The Fed’s GENIUS Act proposal is out

    The Fed’s proposal for Board-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers, which also covers the Act’s tying prohibition, was published on 29 September. Comments are due by 30 November (Federal Register).

    ➜ So what?
    The US regime is moving from statute to rulebook, and the tying rules could shape how banks bundle stablecoin services.
    12

    Waller on AI agents

    At Sibos, Fed Governor Christopher Waller set out the open questions on agent payments: authentication, liability and fraud. “Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?” he asked (Federal Reserve).

    ➜ So what?
    With liability unresolved, network rules will probably fill the gap before regulation does.

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    13

    Valley National to buy Bluevine for about $340 million (75% cash, 25% stock), with closing expected in early 2027 (Banking Dive).

    ➜ So what?
    Banks are buying digital small-business franchises rather than building them.
    14

    Jeeves raised $110 million in a round led by CoinFund. It cites more than $5 billion in annualised volume, and its stablecoin cards are expanding from 25 to 35 countries (PR Newswire).

    ➜ So what?
    Stablecoins are being sold as a feature of corporate cards, not a separate product.
    15

    Airtel Money priced its London IPO at £1.96 a share, a market capitalisation of about £5.3 billion, with admission expected on 14 October (LSE RNS).

    ➜ So what?
    African mobile money now has a public-market valuation benchmark.

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    📖  Word of the week

    tokenised deposit

    A tokenised deposit is an ordinary commercial bank deposit recorded as a token on a digital ledger. It remains a liability of the issuing bank, with the same regulatory treatment as the deposit behind it. A stablecoin, by contrast, is a claim on a separate issuer backed by reserves. Tokenised deposits are what Swift’s first-mover banks are moving on its new ledger (Swift).

    💡  Payment fact of the week
     

    Swift was founded on 3 May 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries. Its first message was sent on 9 May 1977 by Prince Albert of Belgium (Wikipedia). Fifty-three years on, the same co-operative runs a blockchain ledger.

    Compiled from public sources dated within the week covered. Not investment advice.