Mastercard's Two Bets, One Strategy

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Two Mastercard moves landed this week, and together they tell a more interesting story than either one does alone.

The first: Mastercard has teamed up with Borderless.xyz on a pilot testing how Mastercard Crypto Credential can support trusted interactions across cross-border stablecoin payment flows. Stablecoin adoption is accelerating, but trust and compliance remain the friction points slowing real-world deployment.

That's the right question to be asking right now.

The second move: Mastercard is expanding its card infrastructure in the Middle East and Africa, collaborating with AFS to launch corporate credit and prepaid cards in the UAE and Egypt.

Two different products, two different markets, one consistent bet: Mastercard wants to be the trusted layer wherever money moves.

Everything else worth knowing in Payments today is below 👇

Enjoy the weekend. Money never stops moving, so see you Monday!

Cheers,
Marcel

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

🎤 AI's economics don't add up yet by DashDevs. In episode 164 of FinTech Garden, Igor Tomych speaks with author and keynote speaker Eleftherios "Jerry" Floros about the money behind the AI boom, the energy and water constraints already stalling data centre projects, Europe's push for sovereign AI, and the regulatory guardrails he argues are now overdue. Watch the full podcast here 

NEWS

🇦🇪 Mastercard collaborates with AFS to launch corporate credit and prepaid cards in the UAE and Egypt. The partnership expands commercial card access for businesses across two key Middle Eastern and North African markets.

🌎 Borderless.xyz and Mastercard to test cross-border stablecoin payment flows. The pilot will route real-time stablecoin settlements across Mastercard's global network to validate speed and compliance at scale.

🌎 Unlimit and Xiaomi GetApps expand partnership to help game studios scale payments and distribution worldwide. The expanded deal enables developers to accept payments and reach players across more global markets through the GetApps platform.

🇺🇸 Klarna goes live with J.P. Morgan Payments, opening its flexible checkout options to a broader base of U.S. merchants. The integration allows merchants using J.P. Morgan's payment infrastructure to offer Klarna's pay-now, pay-later, and financing options directly at checkout without additional technical lift.

🇺🇸 Fiserv and Stuut partner to bring agentic AI to enterprise receivables. The collaboration combines Fiserv's Commerce Hub and SnapPay with Stuut's AI automation to streamline B2B collections and cash application.

🇺🇸 Nuvei partners with agentic financial operations platform BlackLine, embedding payment acceptance directly into BlackLine's invoice-to-cash workflows. Enterprise customers can now settle invoices instantly with automatic reconciliation.

🇨🇭 Payrexx launches a branded payment terminal range with Newland NPT, bringing a new line of co-branded hardware to market for Swiss merchants. The terminals are designed to integrate directly with the Payrexx platform, giving merchants a unified software and hardware payments stack under a single provider.

🇮🇳 PhonePe launches Fixed Deposit distribution in partnership with leading banks and NBFCs. Users can compare and book FDs directly in the app, alongside a first-of-its-kind Daily Recurring Deposit product starting at just ₹100 per day.

🇺🇸 Lithic and Lightspark partner to power a global card program on stablecoin settlement rails. The Visa network card program settles in USDC, with account balances held natively in stablecoins and converted to local currency at the point of spend.

GOLDEN NUGGET

How do Europeans really bank, pay & invest in 2026? AppsFlyer just published its Europe 2026 finance report.

Here's the breakdown:

1️⃣ 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘀: The biggest category by far, with 338M downloads in 2025, more than wallets, crypto, insurance and investment apps combined. Revolut is now the #1 banking app in Spain, France and Italy. Traditional banks still win retention though, with Day 30 rates 1.5-2x higher than neobanks.

2️⃣ 𝗕𝘂𝘆 𝗡𝗼𝘄, 𝗣𝗮𝘆 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿: The fastest-growing sub-category in Europe, up 40% YoY, while the overall finance category flatlined at 0.4%. Budgeting and insurance apps also grew double digits. Crypto downloads fell 35%.

3️⃣ 𝗪𝗲𝗯-𝘁𝗼-𝗮𝗽𝗽: Discovery still starts on the web. In Western Europe, web-to-app drives 41.8% of all owned media conversions, the dominant channel by a wide margin. In Eastern Europe, text-to-app leads instead.

4️⃣ 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗱: Nearly 1 in every 2 investment app installs in Western Europe was flagged as fraudulent, the highest fraud rate of any finance sub-category. And iOS fraud runs higher than Android, driven by higher payouts attracting fraudsters.

5️⃣ 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲: The real growth engine. Android banking installs nearly tripled in two years while Western Europe's install growth flattened. Banking apps there are shifting from occasional utility to daily habit.

6️⃣ 𝗦𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 > 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀: Session growth is now outpacing install growth across every sub-category. From banking to wallets to investment apps, engagement is deepening even where new installs have stalled.

Growth in European finance is moving from acquisition to engagement.

Source: AppsFlyer

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