Mastercard Inc

SoFi Technologies and Mastercard announced that stablecoin settlement went live across SoFi Bank, N.A.'s debit and credit card program, migrating its entire US$25.00 billion card portfolio to SoFiUSD. SoFiUSD is the first stablecoin issued by a nationally chartered bank on Mastercard's global network, positioning bank-issued stablecoins as an operational bridge between traditional payment rails and blockchain infrastructure. The move connects to SoFi's April 2026 launch of Big Business Banking, which lets enterprises manage fiat and crypto, mint and burn SoFiUSD, and access real time payments in a single bank interface. SoFi's narrative projects $7.7 billion revenue and $1.6 billion earnings by 2029, requiring 21.6% yearly revenue growth and an earnings increase of about $1.0 billion from $636.3 million today, while the most pessimistic analysts saw SoFi reaching only about US$6.0 billion revenue and US$1.0 billion earnings by 2029.

Mastercard is expanding Agent Pay with new trust and intelligence services designed to help banks and merchants assess AI-led transactions more accurately. The first tool, now entering U.S. testing, assigns a probability score indicating whether a transaction was initiated by an AI agent, and over time the score will incorporate more data to help banks and merchants make better-informed approval decisions. Industry projections cited in the announcement suggest that one in 10 consumers could routinely use AI agents to make purchases by 2030, and as AI agents buy across multiple merchants their activity may look different from typical human transactions, raising the risk that legitimate purchases are flagged as suspicious. Partnerships with Cloudflare and Skyfire could provide more information to identify trusted agents and confirm the purpose of transactions, while using identity, fraud and transaction data could help Mastercard improve payment security and reduce unnecessary declines. The near-term earnings impact is likely limited, but the longer-term opportunity is clearer, as better transaction decisions could reduce legitimate purchase declines and support payment volume growth. Competitors are building similar infrastructure: Visa's Intelligent Commerce portfolio includes Agent Scoring, an Agentic Registry and a Trusted Agent Protocol, while PayPal is taking a more merchant-focused approach that lets AI agents discover products, manage shopping carts and complete purchases across online stores.

Mastercard announced the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK, targeting digital asset settlement capabilities, and introduced new AI-powered trust and intelligence services designed to monitor and secure agentic commerce transactions. Management positioned the BVNK deal and the agentic commerce safeguards as a response to evolving digital asset rules and AI-driven payment risks. The BVNK acquisition and the new agentic commerce trust tools are only one part of Mastercard's broader payments technology ambitions. The BVNK purchase turns stablecoin plumbing into a concrete extension of Mastercard's value added stack, tying into Agent Pay and SoFiUSD settlement and giving the firm more control over how blockchain based flows interact with its fraud, identity and behavioral tools. The push also increases Mastercard's reliance on complex technology and regulatory regimes where rivals such as Visa and Stripe are active.

The OUSD stablecoin has officially gone live with Visa, Mastercard and Stripe behind it, according to Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker." OUSD, or Open USD, is a consortium of fintechs and payment companies launching their own stablecoin to compete in a massive market where high interest rates generate essentially free money, and it is being run by Stripe, which acquired Bridge in a unicorn deal and whose Bridge CEO is also running the blockchain. The stablecoin is launching on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with the bulk of liquidity expected on Stripe's own Tempo blockchain, while reserves will be held at BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank. Five founding members — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — will split the equity and have invested a billion dollars for initial liquidity, and depending on usage they will accrue more or less equity or earnings from the stablecoin, meaning earnings accrue to the companies promoting and using it rather than to a private company behind it. The launch follows a huge debate when it was announced, as 140 logos appeared including BlackRock and others, and some companies said they had never heard of it and had not gotten the memo.

BMO and Mastercard announced a new embedded Commercial payments capability that lets eligible Corporate Card clients initiate and manage BMO Commercial virtual card payments directly inside the software platforms they use to run their operations, making BMO the first Mastercard issuer in Canada to offer an integrated embedded finance and payment experience by virtual card within participating platform integrations. The solution, now available for eligible clients in Canada and the United States, integrates Commercial payments into enterprise resource planning, procurement, accounts payable and travel management systems so businesses can manage payments inside their existing workflows. By integrating BMO Commercial virtual cards into participating software platforms through Mastercard's Commercial Express framework, eligible clients can execute secure payments for supplier invoices, travel and corporate expenses without leaving their primary operational workflows, while the framework gives participating platforms a standardized way to enable issuer-backed virtual card payments and reduce implementation complexity. Seth Blacher, Head of TPS Product Management and Payments Modernization at BMO, said the partnership removes the friction between finance software and payment execution, and Diane Miquelon, Senior Vice President, Financial Institutions Partnerships, Mastercard Canada, said embedding virtual card capabilities directly into the platforms where treasury and finance teams operate removes friction, enhances payment security and helps organizations optimize working capital management. BMO Financial Group is the eighth largest bank in North America by assets, with total assets of $1.5 trillion as of July 31, 2026.

Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK for up to $1.8 billion on August 3, 2026, more than double the London-based fiat-to-stablecoin payments firm's $750 million valuation from its December 2024 Series B. The deal follows Stripe's $1.1 billion purchase of Bridge in late 2024, and in June 2026 a consortium of more than 140 companies including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and BlackRock unveiled Open USD, a stablecoin whose news sent Circle's stock down 17% that day. Visa, which had used BVNK as a stablecoin settlement partner before losing it to Mastercard, issued an RFP on August 18 for a replacement licensed in the US, Canada, UK and Singapore, and Visa Ventures invested $10 million in London startup Velocity as a $10 million add-on to its Series A, bringing the total to $48 million, while Visa's stablecoin settlement run rate roughly doubled to about $7 billion annualized by its fiscal second quarter. On September 30, 2026, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority opened its authorisation gateway for cryptoasset firms including stablecoin issuers, with applications running through February 28, 2027 and full enforcement set for October 25, 2027, while in the US seven agencies missed their one-year rulemaking deadline for the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2026, leaving only NPRMs published ahead of a January 18, 2027 effective date. HSBC's HKD stablecoin RedCoin, distributed through its 3.3 million-user PayMe app, along with Citi's partnership with Coinbase and Circle's work with Volante on USDC settlement, point to infrastructure consolidation rather than open experimentation.

Apple's payment service Apple Pay has launched in India, local partner Axis Bank announced on the 30th. India had been one of the few major countries where Apple Pay was unavailable. Axis is the first Indian bank to offer Apple Pay, initially for holders of Visa and Mastercard credit cards. According to the bank's statement, users can register an eligible card in the bank's mobile app or in Apple Wallet and then pay in stores, within apps, and online using an iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad. Axis is India's third-largest private bank, and according to central bank data its credit card issuance stood at 16.3 million cards as of August, ranking fourth in the country. Reuters reported in September that Apple Pay was also in talks with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, both larger than Axis, but had not yet agreed on terms.

Mastercard's Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of 87 cents per share. The dividend will be paid on November 9, 2026 to holders of record of the company's Class A common stock and Class B common stock as of October 9, 2026. Mastercard Incorporated trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MA.

Mastercard Incorporated is expanding its commercial-payments capabilities with Mastercard Advanced B2B Analytics, a new AI-powered platform that helps banks and corporate clients identify suppliers more likely to accept card-based payments. The solution uses dynamic acceptance propensity scoring, interactive dashboards and enriched payment data to turn accounts payable data into actionable supplier insights, letting issuers prioritize suppliers, improve outreach and expand card acceptance. Mastercard estimates the addressable B2B payments opportunity at roughly $80 trillion, and Absa Group and Emirates NBD are among the first institutions offering the capability to corporate clients. For Mastercard, the larger opportunity lies in helping issuers convert existing accounts payable relationships into incremental card transactions, which could support higher switched volumes and strengthen its role in the corporate-payments ecosystem. The initiative also aligns with Mastercard's broader expansion into data, AI and value-added services beyond its traditional payment network.

SoFi Technologies has begun migrating its full debit and credit card program to stablecoin settlement using SoFiUSD across Mastercard's network, a live card program expected to handle more than $25 billion in annualized volume. SoFi Bank has already moved transactions onto blockchain rails, and merchants do not need to hold stablecoins or build new infrastructure to participate. Payward will join the SoFi Exchange Network, list SoFiUSD on Kraken and use SoFi's Big Business Banking capabilities, while SoFi will use Kraken Prime for digital-asset liquidity. In the second quarter, management said roughly $300 million of SoFiUSD was in circulation, and second-quarter adjusted net revenues rose 40% year over year to $1.2 billion, with adjusted EBITDA of $358 million at a 30% margin and fee-based revenues of $472 million. Management lifted 2026 adjusted net revenue guidance to $4.75 billion-$4.85 billion while maintaining about $1.6 billion of adjusted EBITDA, and consensus estimates point to 2026 and 2027 EPS increases of 53.85% and 35.91%, respectively. SoFi shares have fallen 36.7% year to date as of Sept. 25, 2026, compared with a 5.7% decline for PayPal and a 17.4% gain for Block, and SOFI trades at a forward 12-month price-to-sales multiple of 3.83X versus 1.32X for PayPal and 1.63X for Block; SOFI carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Mastercard completed Denmark's first live AI-agent payment, putting an AI agent through a real checkout on Priceless.com. A customer asked the agent to book a coffee tasting and approved the purchase; the agent paid with a Danske Bank Mastercard, PayOS handled the transaction, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys confirmed the customer's consent. Mastercard shares were down about 0.1% at $567.12 at 12.02pm ET on September 28. The announcement offered no numbers showing what this new way to pay could earn, and Mastercard disclosed neither fees nor expected payment volume. The stock sits 17.31% below its $685.80 GF Value estimate, leaving adoption, fraud costs and actual transaction growth to determine how much the technology matters to Mastercard's earnings.

Mastercard is piloting One Credential, a solution that links multiple eligible payment relationships to a single tokenized credential, in partnership with City Union Bank in India. The solution targets eligible SME customers managing both business and personal spending, aiming to simplify payment management and give them greater control over how transactions are funded. Mastercard's latest Dreamonomics report found that 63% of Indian SMEs are interested in real-time payments, compared with 51% across Asia-Pacific, while 45% are open to flexible digital payment solutions and 39% are interested in a combined credit/debit business card with controls. Deeper SME engagement could drive demand for commercial cards, cybersecurity, data services and other value-added offerings along with higher transaction volumes, and One Credential could help issuing banks cross-sell additional products without issuing separate cards. Mastercard's shares have risen 14.9% over the past six months compared with the industry's growth of 3.2%, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 25.63 versus the industry average of 17.38.

Mastercard has switched on stablecoin settlement for SoFi Bank's debit and credit cards, using SoFiUSD across a reported $25b card program and tying blockchain-based assets directly into its existing global network. The launch adds to recent card partnerships and open finance integrations that feed into how the market weighs Mastercard's future growth potential against execution and regulatory risk. Mastercard's stock has a 90 day share price return of 13.75%, while the 30 day move is down 5.15%, and its total shareholder return stands at 45.96% over three years and 62.33% over five years. Against a last close of $567.65, the most followed narrative on Mastercard argues for a fair value of $750, a 24% undervalued view. On the other side of that narrative, Mastercard trades on 30.6x earnings, while the fair ratio sits at 21.5x, the US Diversified Financial industry at 17.3x, and direct peers around 48x.

Mastercard is expanding into agentic commerce through Agent Connect even as major banks demand tougher safeguards for AI shopping agents, with fraud, scams and data-privacy risks moving into focus. The payments network's merchant tools can combine Anthropic's commerce-agent blueprint with Mastercard's payment intelligence and authorization controls, aiming to let AI shop for consumers while keeping Mastercard at the center of every transaction. Shares rose roughly 0.9% to $564.98 at 10.47am ET on Thursday morning. The opportunity carries sharp edges: shopping bots could drive more payment volume, but misunderstood instructions, disputed purchases and murky liability could also inflate network costs. At $564.98, Mastercard trades 17.49% below its GF Value of $684.73.

Meta assembled the first integrated agent-commerce stack, letting its Muse agent move from product discovery to completed payment without a human touching checkout. On September 8, 2026, Meta launched Muse with Stripe's Link wallet for agents built in, enabling checkout at more than a million businesses that accept Link, with Link generating a single-use virtual card for other merchants; Muse is the first AI agent covered by Link's purchase protections. Shop Pay arrived on September 21, when Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Meta's Alexandr Wang announced a deep partnership enabling Shop Pay checkout across all Shopify stores and adding Meta as an AI channel inside Shopify's Agentic Storefronts. A day later, PayPal confirmed global payments across its worldwide merchant network, with Mastercard's Agent Pay platform providing the secure payment rails, and PayPal's stock rose nearly 5 percent on the news. By Mark Zuckerberg's September 23 Meta Connect keynote, the pipeline was live with Stripe, Shop Pay, PayPal, Expedia for travel and Instacart for groceries; Keybanc analysts raised Meta's price target to $900, calling it Muse's moment, and Muse hit number one in Apple's US App Store. Each Muse user gets a dedicated Muse Secure VM, an isolated Linux virtual machine with its own browser, where a separate Sentinel agent approves internet access and sensitive actions, credentials stay in vaults the agent cannot read, and every action generates an audit trail, with a Muse Confidential VM planned later in 2026. Amazon has blocked Muse from shopping on its site, while Muse remains US-only at launch with no global expansion timeline specified and full Shop Pay rollout details undisclosed.

Mastercard is partnering with Alchemy to let developers integrate Mastercard-backed virtual cards directly into AI agents, positioning its network for the growth of agentic commerce. Alchemy's AgentCard will bring Mastercard payment credentials to AI agents through an integration with Mastercard Agent Pay, allowing developers to issue virtual cards with built-in spending limits and restrictions on what and where agents can purchase. The move is part of a broader industry push to build payment infrastructure for AI agents, alongside Visa's Intelligent Commerce and similar toolkits from PayPal, Stripe, and Coinbase. Adoption remains limited: a January Omnisend survey found only 8.29% of U.S. shoppers were fully comfortable with AI completing online purchases for them, while Visa's risk unit reported in 2025 that dark web references to AI Agent rose more than 450% over six months versus the prior six months. Citrini Research's February scenario, framed as a thought experiment rather than a forecast, warns that cost-optimizing AI agents could eventually bypass card rails, where interchange fees are commonly cited at 2% to 3%, and shift transactions to stablecoin rails costing a fraction of a cent each, cutting the network fees Mastercard earns on volume. Hedge fund interest was largely unchanged, with funds holding the stock rising slightly from 157 at the end of Q1 2026 to 158 at the end of Q2 2026, and short interest stood at just 0.87% of float as of August 31, 2026.

SoFi has begun settling debit and credit card transactions across Mastercard's network using SoFi USD, its own stablecoin, in what the companies describe as live blockchain settlement rather than a pilot. SoFi is migrating its entire credit card program, which is expected to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume, onto the arrangement. Under the setup, consumers use a normal credit card without needing to hold crypto or know that blockchain is involved, while merchants are paid as usual, receiving funds in their SoFi bank account and converting them to dollars with round-the-clock access. The settlement itself runs entirely on blockchain stablecoin rails in the background, with the blockchain component invisible to both cardholders and merchants. The development was discussed by Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker," which airs daily at 12:00 p.m.

Bitcoin ETFs took in $1.7 billion in inflows over a strong two-day run, with $714.7 million arriving on Tuesday after Monday's roughly $1 billion haul, the ninth biggest inflow day ever, bringing the four-day streak to about $2.3 billion. In the stablecoin world, Mastercard and SoFi have teamed up on stablecoin settlement for cards, with SoFi now settling debit and credit card transactions across Mastercard's network using SoFi USD and migrating its entire credit card program, which is expected to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume. Binance has invested $100 million into Circle, buying shares at a 5% discount on a vesting schedule, and signed a new five-year commercial agreement to promote USDC on its platform. Binance is also under US scrutiny over possible Iran sanctions violations, according to Bloomberg News. BitMEX, the exchange that invented the perpetual swap, has now closed.

Moov Financial, Inc. announced Moov Money, a real-time person-to-person payment solution built in collaboration with Visa and Mastercard that lets consumers send and receive money using only an eligible debit card and a trusted mobile phone connection. Unlike other P2P services that require both parties to use the same app, Moov Money uses the debit card as the payment destination, reaching the 90.5% of U.S. consumers who carry a debit card according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's 2025 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice. The platform runs on Mastercard Move and Visa Direct, with Moov supplying identity verification, fraud controls and dispute management, and it is available today to banks, credit unions, neobanks and brokerages for domestic person-to-person payments. Jack Henry's Banno Digital Platform is the first to integrate Moov Money, giving more than 1,000 banks and credit unions turnkey access, with others soon to follow. Moov CEO Wade Arnold said moving money shouldn't depend on whether two people use the same app, while Visa Direct North America head Justin Zhao and Mastercard North America EVP Mike Kresse both framed the launch as a step toward interoperable, secure money movement.

Upfront, a financial operations platform serving SMEs across MENA, has partnered with Mastercard to expand digital payment options for smaller businesses. Under the plan, Upfront will add Mastercard commercial card capabilities to its platform, sitting alongside its existing accounts receivable, accounts payable and cash flow management services, and letting eligible SME customers access approved financing through a commercial card for business payments including supplier bills and operating expenses. Upfront will continue to manage the financing relationship with its SME customers, while the Mastercard commercial card programme acts as an additional digital payment channel for approved funds. The initial rollout is expected to centre on Upfront's SME customers in the UAE, with any broader expansion depending on the final programme structure, regulatory requirements and market readiness. Mastercard said its wider SME support includes Built Small, Moving Strong, a platform developed in response to pressures faced by small businesses during recent disruption. Upfront CEO and founder Anas Qudah called the partnership an important step towards making business finance more responsive, and Mastercard EVP for EEMEA commercial and new payment flows Onur Kursun said the collaboration combines fintech innovation with secure commercial payment capabilities.

Mastercard rolled out a payment option Thursday that lets cardholders give an AI agent a virtual card to buy things online without checking in before each purchase, with limits on spending, retailers, or required approval before checkout. Rival Visa partnered with Alchemy earlier this year and has announced its own AI shopping and payment product, Visa Intelligent Commerce, which the company says is still being deployed, while Meta's Muse can search for products and navigate checkout but presents the purchase for the user's final approval. Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at payments company ACI Worldwide, called it "a land grab for infrastructure standards," saying that if card companies set the standards for agentic commerce they can keep the commerce in their environments for decades to come. Consumer appetite lags the infrastructure push: just 7% of U.S. and U.K. consumers surveyed who buy fashion items said they would allow an AI assistant to make purchases without approval under predefined conditions, according to research commissioned by ACI Worldwide, and more than half said they were uncomfortable allowing AI to purchase on their behalf. Mastercard has developed a digital paper trail called Verifiable Intent to record who authorized the agent to shop and what it was authorized to buy, but when asked who would be responsible if an agent made an incorrect, fraudulent, or unauthorized purchase, Mastercard pointed back to Verifiable Intent and did not specify who would ultimately be responsible if an agent bought something outside those instructions.

Alchemy has integrated AgentCard with Mastercard Agent Pay, establishing a dedicated identity layer that gives each autonomous AI agent its own email address, phone number, stablecoin wallet, and tokenized payment credentials. The integration adds Verifiable Intent, a standard co-developed with Google that provides tamper-resistant cryptographic proof linking a consumer's specific instructions to a transaction outcome, with selective disclosure of only the minimum required information at checkout. AgentCard originally launched in June 2026 with Visa Intelligent Commerce, and setup now takes a single command-line instruction and under one minute, with credentials encrypted at rest and granular controls including merchant category restrictions, geographic limits, and instant freeze-or-revoke. Alchemy CEO Nikil Viswanathan said AI agents are moving from simple assistants to software that can take action, while Mastercard EVP of Digital Commercialization Sherri Haymond said the future of commerce is about agents that can be trusted to act on your behalf. The infrastructure push comes as only 3% of transactions involve agents and developers face integration costs of $5,000 to $500,000 per protocol, while Visa completed hundreds of secure agent transactions in a closed beta and projects millions by holiday 2026. Structural obstacles remain: only 23% of consumers trust AI to handle payments and 85% demand transparency on data use, 90% of executives express confidence in their visibility over AI usage while only 11% of applications are visible to IT departments, and 93% of merchants believe the AI provider should bear the financial risk of transactions.

Visa has joined Mastercard and Ant International in pushing for common identity standards for AI purchasing agents, proposing a Know-Your-Agent framework that would let verified trust signals travel across card networks, digital wallets, marketplaces and agent platforms without forcing every participant into the same approval system. Under the proposal, each company would still decide which agents it trusts, while shared certification, identifiable operators and ongoing transaction monitoring could give the emerging agent-commerce ecosystem a common security backbone. Visa shares slipped approximately 0.4% to $369.39. For Visa, interoperability cuts both ways: common standards could strip friction out of agent payments, reduce duplicated verification and accelerate adoption across merchants and platforms, potentially expanding the pool of transactions flowing through Visa's network, but Visa would not control the identity layer alone. No transaction-volume, pricing or revenue commitments were disclosed.

Mastercard is positioning itself beyond payments with a new Collection for Business offering, citing survey findings that small businesses prioritize stability and integrated tools. Its Dreamonomics survey of more than 6,000 SMEs across 18 countries found that 68% prioritize stability and predictability over rapid growth, while 54% avoid unnecessary financial risk, and 61% favor deeper customer relationships over simply reaching more buyers. The new Collection for Business combines payment capabilities with productivity tools, travel and lifestyle benefits, cybersecurity support and business-focused experiences for eligible cardholders. Mastercard sees clear gaps: SMEs already rely on five digital tools on average, yet 89% intend to add more and 78% say integrated tools are critical, while 71% consider cyber protection a priority but only 37% currently use cybersecurity tools. Rival Visa launched its Visa & Main platform with a $100 million working-capital facility, and American Express offers its Business Blueprint, as Mastercard shares have lost 0.5% year to date compared with the broader industry's 11.2% decline.

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has reached approximately $2.345 billion in market cap as of September 16, 2026, a 1,278% year-to-date increase that makes it the third-fastest growing stablecoin of the year, with daily transfer activity tripling since January to $750 million per day by August. Roughly $963 million of the token sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ripple is pursuing a vertically integrated strategy built on acquisitions rather than validators, including the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, now rebranded Ripple Prime, which clears roughly $3 trillion annually and lets RLUSD serve as collateral with zero haircut for over 300 institutional clients, alongside the $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury's treasury management platform, which reaches 1,200 corporate treasurers processing $13 trillion annually. Integrations include a September 2025 partnership with DBS and Franklin Templeton for 24/7 trading of tokenized money market funds, a Securitize link allowing holders of BlackRock BUIDL and VanEck VBILL to swap into RLUSD around the clock, and a Mastercard and WebBank pilot marking the first time a regulated US bank has settled card transactions on a public blockchain using a stablecoin. Ripple holds a New York Department of Financial Services trust company charter and conditional OCC approval, and launched in Japan via SBI under the JFSA's revised Payment Services Act, positioning itself around private-sector consensus and state-level charters after the CLARITY Act failed on September 15. The Federal Reserve Master Account remains the key bottleneck, and expansion into L2 networks via Wormhole NTT is still pending NYDFS approval.

Circle's Arc blockchain went live on September 16, 2026, as an open, EVM-compatible Layer 1 network, one day after the CLARITY Act failed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate. The network's 12 founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, and ICE, operating as a permissioned environment that Circle positions as institutional-grade settlement infrastructure. Arc uses native USDC as its gas token and launches with a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism, with a planned evolution to Proof-of-Stake and future staking economics for the ARC token. Circle plans to tokenize DTC-custodied assets on Arc by H2 2027, targeting a DTCC that industry estimates says processes approximately $2.4 quadrillion in securities transactions annually, while BlackRock is expected to deploy its BUIDL fund, valued by industry estimates at over $2 billion, onto the network. The project faces headwinds: the New York Department of Financial Services has not reviewed or approved the network as of the August 2026 announcement, and the small, hand-picked validator set invites centralization concerns.

A series of agreements between US and Vietnamese companies in sectors including energy, technology, aviation and finance are expected to be announced next week to coincide with the New York visit of Vietnam's top leader, Communist Party General Secretary and State President To Lam. The plans were revealed by officials and documents obtained by Reuters. An internal planning document lists 29 agreements that could be announced at a business conference in New York on the 23rd, which Lam will also attend. The contents of the document are subject to change, and it does not set out the specific details of the planned agreements. US energy companies Murphy Oil and Chevron are expected to announce agreements with Vietnamese state oil and gas company PetroVietnam, while ExxonMobil is expected to announce an agreement with PetroVietnam Refinery and Petrochemical, Vietnam's second-largest refinery. Vietjet, Vietnam's largest private airline, is expected to announce it will lease up to 22 aircraft from four leasing companies, comprising 17 Boeing 737s and five Airbus A321neos. SpaceX is also set to announce an agreement to provide its Starlink satellite internet service to 120 Vietjet aircraft. The planning document also includes an agreement between US-based Meta and Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, and one between US semiconductor giant Qualcomm and Vietnamese telecom company VNPT. Visa, Mastercard and Citibank are also expected to announce agreements with partners in Vietnam's domestic financial and hospitality services sectors.

Stripe introduced its Shared Payment Token in October 2025 as a programmable, revocable primitive designed to standardize how AI agents interact with financial rails. The token prevents exposure of underlying credentials during agent-initiated transactions by mapping to the latest Funding Primary Account Number while adding agent-specific metadata such as merchant scoping, time-bound constraints, and transaction caps, with Stripe Radar providing real-time fraud and risk signaling. Stripe is currently the only provider supporting both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens within a single primitive, a consolidation that matters given BNPL accounts for over $300 billion in global volume and businesses on Stripe report up to a 14% revenue increase on BNPL-eligible sessions. As of March 3, 2026, the platform supports Mastercard Agent Pay, Visa Intelligent Commerce, and BNPL providers including Affirm and Klarna, meaning merchants already integrated with Stripe need no additional development work to support agentic transactions. Adoption remains far behind the infrastructure: only 14% of consumers express trust in AI to execute purchases, dropping significantly for transactions exceeding $50, while just 3% of total transactions involve agents even as 42% of merchants report testing the technology. Stripe is also co-developing the open-source Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI and has made a $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, signaling an intent to control the routing and execution environment where agents operate.

Mastercard released its inaugural Dreamonomics Report, a global survey of more than 6,000 small and medium-sized enterprises across 18 countries conducted by Hypothesis, finding that 68% of SMEs prioritize stability and predictability over fast growth and 54% actively avoid unnecessary financial risk. The report also found that 61% of SMEs would rather build deep customer relationships than reach as many customers as possible, that SMEs already use five digital business tools on average with 89% wanting to adopt more, and that 71% prioritize protection from cyber threats even though only 37% use cybersecurity tools today. Regionally, 74% of SMEs in Latin America value stability and predictability over fast growth, including 76% in both Argentina and Brazil, while 76% of SMEs in Indonesia do the same and the Middle East and Africa leads in technology adoption, with 43% using AI or machine learning tools and 42% using cybersecurity tools. Alongside the report, Mastercard launched The Mastercard Collection for Business, available to World Business, World Elite Business and the new World Legend Business debit and credit cardholders, bringing together Business Growth, Business Lifestyle and Business Security benefits. Mark Barnett, Global Head of Small and Medium Enterprises at Mastercard, said small businesses bring the dream while Mastercard brings the infrastructure to help propel, protect and power that dream, adding that owners are looking for growth that is more predictable, more protected and easier to manage. Mastercard will also extend the Dreamonomics insights platform into in-market events and cultural moments, including the TCS New York City Marathon and the Australian Open.

Visa Inc. says the "couch economy" has become a lasting part of consumer behavior rather than a passing e-commerce trend, with online and in-app payments expanding in every market it studied between 2019 and 2026. In the United States, online and in-app payment volume rose to 58% in 2026 from 48% in 2019, while Poland climbed to 24% from 10% and the UAE increased to 55% from 35%. More than 17% of U.S. cards now carry streaming subscriptions, versus about 6% tied to cinema and concerts, and in the UAE active food delivery cards jumped from roughly 2% in 2018 to nearly 30% in 2026. Visa said the shift creates a favorable payments backdrop, as more online, in-app, subscription and delivery spending can lift digital transaction activity across its network and deepen card usage through recurring payments. Mastercard Incorporated and American Express Company are also benefiting from the same move toward digital purchases, with Mastercard seeing higher transaction volumes and demand for tokenization and fraud prevention services, and American Express gaining through increased card spending, merchant fees and its closed-loop transaction data. Visa shares have gained 7.1% in the year-to-date period against the broader industry's 10.8% decline, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 25.18X versus the industry average of 17.69X.

London-based payments company Finsei has launched an acquiring service that lets business clients accept Visa and Mastercard payments through the same account they already use for transfers and cards. Existing clients can add card acceptance through a simplified onboarding process without bringing on a new provider, with settlement funds landing in the same account that holds their multi-currency balances, cards and SEPA/SWIFT transfers. Card payments are accepted through a dedicated acquiring dashboard with its own login, and settlements flow straight into the business's existing Finsei account. To launch acquiring, Finsei selected two technology partners: Hypergate handles the payment gateway and routing, while SilverFlow handles processing with direct connectivity to card schemes. CEO Artjoms Dozorcevs said acquiring is built into the company's broader financial ecosystem rather than treated as a stand-alone product, giving clients business accounts, payment infrastructure and other financial services through a single point of access. FINSEI LTD is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under reference number 900878 and company number 11347482, is ISO 27001 certified, and holds client funds in UK and EU banks under FSCS protection.

Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, announced that iPayLinks, a leading cross-border payment and capital settlement platform, has selected it to power a new Mastercard virtual commercial debit card programme. The programme, expected to launch by the end of Q3, extends iPayLinks' cross-border proposition into card issuing, with iPayLinks acting as self-issuer and retaining control of its card programme and spend controls while Thredd delivers the processing layer, including BIN and programme set-up, 3D Secure, and fraud and transaction monitoring through a single cloud-native platform. Damien Gough, Head of APAC at Thredd, said the addition of virtual commercial debit cards represents a natural extension of iPayLinks' proposition, and Gunther Zhen, Founder and CEO at iPayLinks, said the partnership expands the capabilities available through the iPayLinks platform. The partnership also reinforces Thredd's continued growth across Asia Pacific, where it supports fintechs and payment providers launching card propositions for regional and international use cases.