Mastercard Wants to Make Digital Wallets Truly Global
Hey Payments Fanatic!
Digital wallets already have billions of users. The harder part is making them work seamlessly across borders, merchants, and payment networks.
Mastercard is going after exactly that.
The company has launched Mastercard Wallet Pay, a new portfolio designed to connect digital wallets across contactless, QR, and online payments. Partners already include Alipay+, GCash, KakaoPay, Mercado Pago, TrueMoney, DaviPlata, MTN and TenPay Global.
The interesting part is the shift from wallet adoption to interoperability. Instead of every wallet building its own global connectivity, Mastercard wants to provide the infrastructure underneath — from acceptance and card issuing to cross-border money movement.
And as more payments move on-chain, the infrastructure being built around stablecoins is becoming just as important.
Here’s what else is happening in payments 👇
Back on Monday with more!
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
💡 Stablecoin Investors: The VC Capital Building the Stablecoin Stack. Stablecoins are attracting major VC backing not only at the issuer level, but across the infrastructure behind them — payments, settlement, cards, banking, APIs, and dedicated networks. Coinbase Ventures and Circle lead the investor activity, alongside Ribbit Capital, Dragonfly, Framework Ventures, Galaxy, Sequoia, Lightspeed, and QED. The bigger signal is that much of this infrastructure was funded before stablecoins became a mainstream fintech theme.
NEWS
🌏 Mastercard launches Wallet Pay to scale digital wallets worldwide, enabling wallet providers to offer Mastercard-branded payment credentials. The solution aims to accelerate digital wallet adoption across Asia Pacific and beyond.
🇺🇸 Mastercard gives merchants a simpler way to build, connect and scale, launching a unified developer platform for payment acceptance. The platform consolidates APIs and tools to help merchants integrate Mastercard services more efficiently.
🌏 Ant International, Mastercard and Visa initiate collaboration on Know-Your-Agent interoperability to scale agentic commerce. The initiative aims to establish shared standards for AI agents that browse, buy, and transact on behalf of users.
🇱🇧 Mastercard and Banque du Liban collaborate to expand digital payment acceptance for SMEs and women entrepreneurs in Lebanon. The initiative targets underserved business owners with tools to accept digital payments and grow online.
🇱🇧 Bank Audi and Mastercard launch an initiative to empower 10,000 Lebanese entrepreneurs to join the digital economy. Eligible businesses receive free bank accounts and Mastercard business debit cards, with Mastercard providing digital acceptance solutions and merchant training programmes.
🇪🇺 Solidgate partners with Klarna to bring flexible payments to merchants across Europe, including the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe. Merchants on Solidgate's platform now access Klarna's BNPL options across Pay in Full, interest-free installments, and longer-term financing for its 120M+ shoppers.
🇭🇰 Unlimit expands its Asia-Pacific presence with a Hong Kong money service operator licence. Hong Kong ranked as the world's fourth largest FX centre with $883 billion in average daily turnover in April 2025. From its new hub, Unlimit will add local payment channels for businesses operating across the region.
🇺🇸 Checkout.com records triple-digit US growth, launching new products across North America. Q2 2026 US payment volume grew 126% YoY, with total processing volume on track to exceed $100 billion by year end. New capabilities span direct acquiring, payouts, issuing, and ISV solutions.
🇲🇽 Mastercard names Sidney Massunaga Country Manager for Mexico, appointing him to lead the company's business strategy in the country. Massunaga brings over 20 years of experience in financial services and strategic consulting across Latin America and Asia. He will strengthen Mastercard's commercial capabilities and drive innovation across Mexico's payments ecosystem.
🇺🇸 MoneyGram Card goes live on Rain, giving users a way to spend stable dollar balances anywhere Visa is accepted. Powered by stablecoin rails under the hood, the card works at over 175 million merchant locations. MoneyGram is on pace to run roughly $3 billion of FX trading through stablecoins annually.
🇺🇸 Coinbase CEO eyes stablecoin payments as a key growth engine, signalling a strategic pivot toward payments infrastructure. Brian Armstrong sees stablecoins as central to Coinbase's next phase of expansion.
🇺🇸 Coinbase teams up with Moov to bring stablecoin payments to over 1,000 community banks and credit unions across the U.S. Coinbase supplies the regulated digital asset infrastructure while Moov embeds stablecoin acceptance, merchant settlement, and real-time funding into its existing payments platform.
🌍 VaultN and Paysafe join forces to bring real-time B2B payment settlement to game distribution. Built on the Skrill Business platform, VaultN Payments & Wallet settles transactions at the moment of sale. Take-Two Interactive is among the first major publishers to operate with the embedded B2B wallet.
🇺🇸 Remitly and Etsy partner to simplify global seller payouts, making Remitly an additional payment provider for Etsy Payments in 15 countries. New international sellers can choose Remitly during onboarding to receive earnings via local bank accounts and mobile wallets, with the option to hold balances in USD and convert locally.
🌍 Wirex is now live on Tempo for enterprise stablecoin card programs, enabling partners to use Tempo as a settlement layer. Wirex, a principal member of Visa and Mastercard, reached $1 billion in annualized onchain volume just 131 days after launch. The integration combines Wirex's regulated card stack with Tempo's stablecoin settlement and advisory services.
🇪🇺 BNP Paribas supports the accelerated rollout of Wero to merchant and retail customers across Europe. Air France, Decathlon, Fnac Darty, and Orange now offer Wero as an online payment method in France. All BNP Paribas retail customers in France can now use Wero for online purchases at participating merchants across five European markets.
🇮🇳 DBS Bank India expands DBS MAX, simplifying multi-gateway digital payment collections for businesses. The upgraded solution helps merchants improve payment resilience and gain consolidated visibility across digital collections. It supports optimised transaction flows through a single platform for multiple payment gateways.
🇺🇸 Intuit completes FedNow Service certification, enabling instant payments for small and mid-market businesses. The milestone lets Intuit partner with financial institutions to send instant payment transactions on behalf of customers. Businesses on the platform can now access real-time settlement and faster cash flow.
🇮🇳 Visa, AU SFB and Cheq launch India's first LED-enabled credit card, combining a dynamic display with contactless payment technology. The card shows real-time transaction details and balance information on an embedded LED screen.
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