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.

PhotonPay has closed a $40 million Series C round led by Blockchain Capital to expand its stablecoin-focused Financial OS. SBI Group joined as a new investor, alongside existing backers IDG Capital, GL Ventures and Lightspeed Faction. The funding follows a January 2026 Series B round. PhotonPay reported $65 billion in annualized transaction volume as of August 2026, up from $30 billion reported at the time of its Series B. Its model combines stablecoin liquidity with bank relationships and local payment networks, rather than replacing those networks outright. The company says it holds 34 payment and financial licenses and regulatory authorizations and serves more than 200,000 corporate clients. It also plans an execution layer supporting the Model Context Protocol for autonomous AI agents. The expansion comes as Stripe and specialist firms including Rain and MassPay pursue corporate settlement opportunities.

Mastercard is seeking to make network tokens the payment standard for purchases initiated by AI agents. On its October 29, 2026, earnings call, Chief Executive Michael Miebach described processor-issued one-time virtual card numbers as a temporary bridge rather than a lasting approach. He said Mastercard would support end-to-end tokenization through Agent Pay to preserve cardholder choice, rewards and spending controls. The company also announced that Shopify is integrating Agent Pay and network tokens into Shop Pay, alongside a strategic partnership with OpenAI covering AI payments and services. Mastercard has been building merchant-facing tools for agentic commerce throughout 2026, but Miebach acknowledged that merchants’ technical readiness remains uneven. Other payments companies are developing their own approaches: Stripe supports agentic network tokens from Mastercard and Visa, while Visa has introduced tools for AI-driven shopping. Consumer concerns about fraud and liability remain a potential barrier to adoption.

Hummingbird announced its acquisition of Quantimon on October 28, 2026, as it works to connect machine-learning risk detection with compliance investigations. Financial terms were not disclosed. Quantimon’s team has joined Hummingbird to build closed-loop transaction monitoring capabilities, while co-founder and CEO Ben Duranske will advise during the transition. The companies had been commercial partners for approximately a year. The proposed feedback loop would use Hummingbird’s structured records of alert resolutions to retrain Quantimon’s detection models. Quantimon claims its algorithms can reduce false-positive alerts by up to 67%; the research provided does not establish how that figure was measured. Its federated learning network is designed to help institutions identify emerging financial crime patterns without sharing underlying customer or transaction data. The deal is Hummingbird’s second acquisition, following its purchase of data automation and integration startup LogicLoop in September 2024.

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.