Mastercard has teamed up with Australian stablecoin platform Stables to enable retail customers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to use their stablecoins anywhere that Mastercard is accepted. The partnership includes a wallet that is exclusively for stablecoins and is built by Stables, and a payment card supported by Mastercard that allows users to save and spend the USDC stablecoin by converting it into fiat and settling on Mastercard’s network.
The card can be accessed via the Stables digital application on mobile wallets. The Mastercard-enabled wallet integration will be launched in Q2 2023 and will be initially available for users based in Australia before being expanded to Europe, the US, the UK and most of the Asia-Pacific region.
The wallet accepts deposits in a number of stablecoins, including USDT and BUSD, but these will be automatically converted into USDC at no cost.