Stripe and Plasma Add Five Currencies to Stablecoin Card Infrastructure
Oct. 20, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
Stripe announced on October 15, 2026, that it was adding multi-currency capabilities to its stablecoin card infrastructure, with Plasma as a primary design partner. The expansion supports spending in US dollars, euros, Brazilian reais, Mexican pesos and Colombian pesos. It also supports Open USD and payment stablecoins meeting the regulatory criteria of the US GENIUS Act.
The change is intended to let cardholders use non-dollar balances, including euros, for local-currency transactions without first converting them into US dollars. Stripe’s card infrastructure is powered substantially by Bridge, which it acquired in 2024. Stripe and Plasma are developing automated routing that would select a fiat or stablecoin balance at the point of sale, but that feature remains in development. The companies aim to extend the infrastructure from more than 30 countries currently supported to more than 100 by 2027. Those expansion and routing targets are plans, not capabilities available today.
Stripe announced on October 15, 2026, that it was adding multi-currency capabilities to its stablecoin card infrastructure, naming Plasma as a primary design partner. The expansion supports spending in five fiat currencies: the US dollar, euro, Brazilian real, Mexican peso and Colombian peso. Its central change is that a cardholder with a non-dollar balance, such as euros, can make a local-currency transaction without first converting that balance into US dollars.
The companies also plan to extend the infrastructure’s geographic reach. It currently supports more than 30 countries, and Stripe and Plasma are targeting more than 100 by 2027. Separately, their engineering teams are developing automated currency routing at the point of sale. That feature remains under development and should not be confused with the multi-currency capability announced in October.
Five fiat currencies and a defined stablecoin scope
The five named fiat currencies are USD, EUR, BRL, MXN and COP. Fiat currency is government-issued money; for cardholders, the relevant change is the ability to spend from a supported non-dollar balance without an intermediate conversion into dollars. The announcement does not establish support for every currency in which a cardholder might hold funds or make a purchase.
On the stablecoin side, the infrastructure supports Open USD, or OUSD, and payment stablecoins meeting the regulatory criteria of the US GENIUS Act. Stablecoins are digital assets intended to maintain a stable value relative to another asset, commonly a fiat currency. The distinction between supported fiat currencies and supported stablecoins matters: the list of currencies available for card spending does not, by itself, identify every digital asset a cardholder can use.
The verified announcement names five fiat currencies. Although some trade reports included the British pound, the official announcement and primary company statements did not list it among the newly supported currencies. Likewise, some reports identified USDC as a supported launch stablecoin, while the official announcement named OUSD and described other eligible stablecoins by reference to GENIUS Act criteria. The announced scope is narrower than those accounts suggest.
Reducing the need for dollar conversion
For a cardholder holding euros, the practical benefit is a more direct route to a local-currency purchase. Instead of first changing the balance into US dollars, the card infrastructure can support the transaction from that non-dollar balance. That addresses a specific limitation in dollar-centered stablecoin card arrangements, rather than changing how every card transaction is funded or settled.
Stripe’s stablecoin card infrastructure is powered substantially by Bridge, the crypto rails company Stripe acquired in 2024. Plasma had previously relied on Rain for card issuance and program management in its consumer app, Plasma One. Those details place the new design partnership in context, but the announcement does not say that Rain has been replaced in Plasma One or describe any change to that app’s existing card arrangements.
The planned automated routing is a separate next step. Stripe and Plasma engineers are working on a system designed to choose a fiat or stablecoin balance dynamically at a point-of-sale terminal, without requiring the cardholder to make a manual selection. Because the work is still in development, the announcement does not establish when the feature will be available or how it will make that choice in an individual transaction.
Expansion plans and market response
The target of more than 100 countries by 2027 would be a substantial increase from the more than 30 currently supported. It is a target, not a statement that the additional markets are live. The companies have not identified the full set of countries in the information provided, so the geographic plan should not be read as a commitment to launch in any particular market.
Plasma’s native token, XPL, rose more than 8.4% in the 24 hours after the partnership announcement, alongside increased trading volume on centralized exchanges. The timing records a market response following the news, but it does not establish that the card announcement alone caused the price move. For the card infrastructure, the immediate development is support for the five named fiat currencies; automated routing and the wider country footprint remain plans.
Mastercard and Visa are extending stablecoin technology into the systems that settle card payments between financial institutions, while leaving the consumer checkout experience largely unchanged. Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK in August 2026 and has expanded its network’s settlement options to include regulated stablecoins. Visa, meanwhile, is working with Stripe-owned Bridge and Lead Bank on on-chain settlement for card programs. The shift became more concrete in September, when SoFi Bank moved its credit and debit card issuing portfolio to live settlement using its bank-issued SoFiUSD. That portfolio represents more than $25 billion in annualized card volume, a measure distinct from the value settled in stablecoins. Visa separately reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate exceeding $25 billion in October. The networks’ initiatives target the back-end movement and reconciliation of funds, including periods when traditional bank settlement rails are unavailable; they do not require merchants to accept cryptocurrency.
The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a bridge connecting tokenised-asset platforms to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services for wholesale settlement in central bank money. The arrangement enables atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement, in which an asset and its payment move together. It does not yet make wholesale settlement available around the clock: Pontes depends on T2 operating hours and requires tokenised central bank money balances to be defunded at the end of the day. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone says the Eurosystem plans to extend Pontes operating hours substantially by mid-2027 and reach 24/7/365 availability in 2028. Separately, the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agorá has tested cross-border payments using a shared programmable ledger that brings tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves into a single settlement process. Both initiatives address delays and liquidity demands in wholesale payments, but neither makes continuous, cross-border settlement available today.
Project Agorá’s real-value testing settled 30 live, multi-currency transactions worth approximately CHF 800,000, with atomic settlement averaging about 80 seconds. The tests involved 28 commercial institutions and five central banks. The result shows how tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves could support faster cross-border settlement, though it does not establish that settlement latency has been eliminated. The project’s prototype found that tokenisation did not change the legal character or regulatory obligations of deposits and reserves. Its design also let participating institutions conduct compliance checks concurrently. Seven more commercial banks joined in September 2026, taking private-sector participation to nearly 50 institutions. At Sibos in October, banking executives described the testing pipeline as a step towards production trials alongside the European Central Bank’s Pontes platform. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York did not participate in the live test transactions, an important qualification for the US dollar tests.
Ripple’s final federal trust bank charter, a Moody’s investment-grade rating for RLUSD and a planned expansion of the stablecoin’s availability on Coinbase have strengthened its position as a regulated digital dollar. Coinbase said Global Exchange access, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow its initial retail and prime rollout. Moody’s assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the first investment-grade rating it has given a stablecoin. The distinctions behind those developments matter. Ripple National Trust Bank manages RLUSD’s reserve collateral, but the legal issuer remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York-regulated Ripple subsidiary. The national trust bank is uninsured and cannot take commercial retail deposits or extend credit. Moody’s also noted that holders do not currently own the underlying reserves directly and that statutory bankruptcy protections depend on implementation of the GENIUS Act, whose rules take effect in January 2027.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.