From Stablecoin Payouts to AI Agents: Coinbase Is Expanding Fast

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Cross-border payouts remain one of the least efficient parts of the payments industry.

Businesses still tie up capital in prefunded accounts, wait days for settlement, and navigate a maze of banking corridors just to move money internationally.

That's why Coinbase's new partnership with MassPay caught my attention.

The two companies are bringing stablecoin-powered payouts directly into MassPay's enterprise platform, allowing eligible clients to fund in dollars, settle in USDC, and distribute funds globally in real time.

What's interesting here isn't just the use of stablecoins.

It's the fact that companies no longer need to build their own crypto infrastructure to use them. Coinbase is handling the wallets, custody, compliance, liquidity, and settlement layer behind the scenes, while MassPay focuses on delivering the payout experience.

At the same time, Coinbase is pushing in an entirely different direction. This week, the company launched Coinbase for Agents, allowing AI agents to connect directly to Coinbase accounts and execute payments, trades, and financial workflows within user-defined limits.

Taken together, both announcements point to the same trend: stablecoins are increasingly becoming part of the underlying infrastructure layer for both global commerce and the emerging agent economy.

And while we're on the topic of payments giants, keep scrolling for an interesting breakdown of who actually owns Mastercard and why the answer might surprise you.

Today's remaining Payments headlines are just below. 👇 See you on Monday!

Cheers,

Marcel

INSIGHTS

📊 Who Owns FinTech: Mastercard. Mastercard’s ownership reflects its position as critical global financial infrastructure. The top shareholders include Vanguard Group (9.04%), BlackRock (7.73%), and the Mastercard Foundation (7.38%), while the top 10 institutional investors collectively own just over 43% of the company. Read the full article here

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

🎤 Stablecoins without the volatility by DashDevs. In episode 140 of the FinTech Garden Podcast, host Igor Tomych speaks with Kebbie Sebastian, Founder and CEO of Merge, about how stablecoins are transforming cross-border payments, treasury infrastructure, and global money movement, along with the opportunities and challenges driving adoption. Watch the full podcast here

NEWS

🇦🇺 Maple Finance brings institutional yield opportunities to Tempo's FinTech infrastructure. The integration gives Tempo's enterprise FinTech clients direct access to institutional-grade yield opportunities on stablecoins, embedded natively within the infrastructure stack where they are already building.

🇺🇸 Coinbase has launched Coinbase for Agents, a platform that allows users to connect AI agents directly to their Coinbase accounts. The solution enables agents to perform financial tasks such as trading and payments within user-defined limits, combining financial reasoning with execution and advancing Coinbase’s vision of an agent-first financial ecosystem.

🇺🇸 Coinbase partners with MassPay to unlock cross-border stablecoin payouts for global enterprises. Eligible MassPay clients can now send USDC globally, prefund and manage treasury through Coinbase Prime custody, and unlock instant onchain settlement without the friction of traditional cross-border payments.

🇮🇹 Satispay: capital increase of up to €120 million. The new funds will be added to the liquidity already available, further strengthening a capital structure that is considered robust and conducive to the platform’s technological development. Read more

🇺🇸 Ramp has launched Applied AI Solutions, a service that embeds Ramp engineers within finance teams to build custom AI-powered workflows. Ramp aims to automate complex finance functions such as planning, reporting, variance analysis, and financial close through production-ready AI agents.

🇸🇰 Mollie launches in Slovakia to power the next wave of European e-commerce growth. The move gives Slovak merchants access to a wide range of international and local payment methods through a single integration, helping them scale across Europe while simplifying payment operations and reconciliation.

🇧🇷 Pix gets high-renown brand status in Brazil. High-renown status is granted to brands that are widely known by the public and have built a reputation, prestige, and trust over time. The key effect of the recognition is that the brand is protected in all branches of economic activity.

🇬🇭 enza receives regulatory approval to deliver digital payments services in Ghana. The licence positions enza to support banks, FinTechs, and financial institutions with scalable payment solutions tailored to local market needs, with customer launches expected later this year. 

🇺🇸 Visa partners with OpenAI to power the next generation of AI commerce. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence.

🇲🇽 RedotPay secures Mexico virtual asset service provider registration, reinforcing compliance-first expansion. The approval enables the company to conduct virtual asset operations and credit card issuer activities within Mexico’s regulatory framework, supporting its plans to expand stablecoin-based payment services and launch a new credit card program in the country.

🇺🇸 Orbital unveils plans for US expansion as demand grows for stablecoin and cross-border payment infrastructure, with Miami, Florida, set to serve as its base of operations. This planned expansion is designed to meet rising demand for regulated, enterprise-grade payment infrastructure connecting the US with international markets.

🇿🇦 ACI Worldwide powers next-generation PSP expansion in Africa with Kwik Payments go-live. By implementing ACI Payments Orchestration Platform, Kwik Payments empowers merchants to seamlessly manage and optimize payments across online, mobile, and recurring channels, while intelligently routing transactions across multiple acquirers, payment methods, and geographies.

🇮🇳 Pine Labs launches AI-powered payments protocol for UPI transactions. The new payments infrastructure enables artificial intelligence (AI) agents to execute Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions without requiring real-time user authentication.

🌎 Ripple and Bitso expand partnership to advance enterprise stablecoin settlement in Latin America. Together with RLUSD, Ripple’s enterprise-grade USD stablecoin, MXNB will support more efficient liquidity and settlement flows for enterprise cross-border payments across the U.S.–Mexico corridor.

🇺🇸 OneDosh bets on stablecoins with a $1M Funding boost for global payments infrastructure. With this latest funding, OneDosh plans to accelerate the development of its infrastructure as it bets on a future where money moves freely across borders through stablecoin-powered systems.

🇺🇸 Adyen to acquire Orb to unify billing and payments infrastructure for enterprise merchants. Orb, which helps businesses manage usage-based pricing and billing, will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under Adyen’s incubator model, strengthening the company’s capabilities in subscription, consumption-based, and AI-era revenue infrastructure.

🇲🇽 Cobre and Toku accelerate fundraising. Toku will integrate Cobre's infrastructure to enable automatic collection and reconciliation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, allowing financial institutions, insurers, and telecommunications firms to move more than $200 million annually.

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