Ripple, the company behind XRP and the RLUSD stablecoin, will partner with payments giant Mastercard and crypto exchange Gemini to bring stablecoin payments to credit card transactions.
The partnership will allow purchases made with a Gemini-branded credit card to be made with RLUSD, with settlement between Mastercard and Utah-based WebBank on Ripple’s XRPL blockchain. WebBank is the issuer of the Gemini credit card.
“Mastercard is integrating regulated, open-loop stablecoins into our global payments network to support consumer choice and safety,” Sherri Haymond, Mastercard’s head of digital commercialization, said in a statement shared with DL News.
“We’re enabling stablecoin settlement today while exploring how these assets can enhance
future blockchain use cases.”
Stablecoins to $4 trillion
The fourway-partnership highlights the buzz around stablecoins. The US government has adopted a friendlier approach to digital assets under President Donald Trump. This year has seen regulators ease off their policing of the crypto industry and lawmakers sign a landmark stablecoin bill into law.
These initiatives are fuelling a skyrocketing growth of the stablecoin market. It has surged 48% to be worth $305 billion today. But industry insiders expect that figure to surge to $4 trillion by 2030.
Numbers like those are incentivising institutional players to muscle into stablecoins like never before. Zelle, Western Union, Wells Fargo, Santander, and Société Générale have all pledged to tap into stablecoins.
Mastercard is also reportedly in late-stage talks to acquire stablecoin startup Zerohash in a deal worth up to $2 billion.
First off the block?
It is against this backdrop that Ripple has inked the new partnership.
Ripple says it is one of the first instances in which a US bank settles credit card transactions using stablecoins on a public blockchain. But it isn’t Ripple’s first partnership with Gemini and WebBank.
In August, Gemini released a credit card that allows cardholders to earn cash back denominated in XRP, the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency.
Like Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT, Ripple’s RLUSD year-old stablecoin is backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US Treasuries, and other cash equivalents. Ripple is integrating the token into its myriad businesses, including the recently acquired GTreasury, a firm with over four decades of experience in treasury services for Fortune 500 companies.
Speaking at Ripple’s Swell conference in New York City on Tuesday, GTreasury CEO Renaat Ver Eecke said he was eager to educate clients on the benefits of using stablecoins in treasury management.
“What if we could reduce settlement times to minutes?” Ver Eecke said, recalling conversations with clients. “They will immediately come to me and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I have $50 million trapped in two legal entities in Europe that hoard this cash because they’re worried about five, six, seven day settlements.’”
RLUSD is the world’s 11th-largest stablecoin, according to DefiLlama data, with a market value just above $1 billion as of Wednesday.
The companies will conduct “initial onboarding” in “the coming months,” according to a news release, though that subject to “obtaining the required regulatory approvals,” according to the news release.
