SAN FRANCISCO, March 5, 2026, 04:15 PST
- SoFi and Mastercard have widened their partnership—SoFiUSD can now be used for settlement right on Mastercard’s network.
- SoFi Bank and Galileo look set to be early adopters of the stablecoin in card settlement flows.
- Visa is launching its stablecoin-linked card initiative, Bridge, right as this move happens.
SoFi Technologies has extended its tie-up with Mastercard, opening the door for SoFiUSD — its U.S. dollar stablecoin — to be used as a settlement method on Mastercard’s global payments rails. “SoFiUSD is at the heart of our strategy to make it faster, cheaper, and safer for people around the world to move money,” CEO Anthony Noto said. 1
This announcement lands at a key moment: settlement—the under-the-hood process that keeps card payments moving—still relies on old-school batch windows and fixed cut-off times. A stablecoin, a type of crypto token pegged to the U.S. dollar or another currency, has backers arguing it enables round-the-clock fund transfers.
SoFi and Mastercard plan to look into ways for card issuers and merchant acquirers—the banks backing cards and the companies handling merchant payments—to settle card transactions with SoFiUSD. That work could touch cross-border remittances and B2B transfers as well.
Card networks are racing to fold blockchain-inspired settlement tech into traditional systems. Visa, for its part, announced plans this week to deepen its collaboration with Bridge. The two aim to roll out stablecoin-linked Visa cards across more than 100 countries, and according to the companies, certain transactions will settle “onchain” via Bridge’s banking partner. 2
SoFi climbed roughly 0.5% to $18.70 ahead of Thursday’s open.
Mastercard is pitching the partnership as an effort to link “regulated stablecoins” to its vast network. “By working with SoFi to enable SoFiUSD across the Mastercard network, we’re expanding how trusted digital currencies can be used at global scale,” said Sherri Haymond, Mastercard’s global head of digital commercialization. 3
SoFi said it expects SoFi Bank, N.A. to settle its own Mastercard-powered debit and credit transactions in SoFiUSD. Its Galileo tech platform, meanwhile, is expected to offer client banks the option to settle card transactions in the stablecoin as well.
SoFi Bank, N.A. issues SoFiUSD, and according to the company, every unit is matched one-to-one with cash or cash equivalents. 4
One more nugget for investors: a filing revealed Noto picked up 56,000 shares on March 2 at a weighted average price of $17.8842, bumping his direct holdings to 11,675,452 shares. 5
Sector analysts think these new settlement options could have more impact backstage than on a customer’s handset. “While that is behind the scenes for consumers, it helps businesses and issuers settle transactions faster,” said Zil Bareisis, senior analyst at Celent, speaking to American Banker. 6
Still, there are clear pitfalls. Rules for stablecoins remain in flux, and both companies pointed to regulatory and compliance concerns tied to digital assets. Whether adoption actually happens hinges on banks, merchants and processors choosing to overhaul their existing workflows for this new way of settling.
