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.

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.

Mastercard opened developer early access for Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) on October 20, 2026, releasing buyer- and seller-side APIs, a sandbox and developer toolkits. In a Cloudflare Connect demonstration, marketing agency Hype tested an autonomous agent making nine payments to two merchants within a single budget, without manual billing or account setup. AP4M uses HTTP 402 payment challenges, but differs from crypto-native implementations of the x402 protocol. Its agents issue digitally signed vouchers off-chain; merchants can batch and redeem them later instead of settling every request on-chain. The pilot combined agent wallet infrastructure from Coinbase Developer Platform and BVNK, settlement on Base, and Mastercard’s multi-currency fiat and stablecoin settlement platform. Circle separately expanded its managed payments service to target AI-agent traffic using USDC. Together, the developments show competing approaches to machine-to-machine payments, with different choices about settlement, funding and who manages digital assets.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has issued tokenised MAS Bills in live trials on its Singapore Dollar Test Network, settling them with wholesale central bank digital currency. An initial S$1 million one-week tranche was followed by a S$10 million tranche scheduled to mature on October 23, 2026. MAS says placing tokenised securities and central bank money on common infrastructure supports monetary stability and settlement finality. Separately, the Bank for International Settlements and the Institute of International Finance completed real-value testing for Project Agorá. Twenty-eight financial institutions and five central banks executed 30 transactions worth CHF 800,000 across six currencies, averaging 80 seconds per settlement. The initiatives illustrate why central banks favour wholesale CBDCs and tokenised bank deposits for institutional transactions: they aim to preserve settlement in central bank money and the existing banking system. Stablecoins remain a competing model, with industry participants citing their liquidity and round-the-clock availability.

Mastercard and Visa are advancing different approaches to AI-initiated business payments. At Cloudflare Connect, Mastercard demonstrated an agent making nine payments across multiple service providers under one authorized budget. It also opened early developer access to Agent Pay APIs, a sandbox and toolkits. Visa expanded its commercial agentic suite around a BILL and Billtrust pilot, alongside spend analytics and fraud tools. The distinction is how each approach constrains the agent. Visa’s pilot lets an agent pay invoices that buyers have already approved, using its Trusted Agent Protocol to navigate supplier-portal security without sharing underlying login credentials. Mastercard is testing controls for machine-to-machine transactions, including signed vouchers, agent verification and a score intended to estimate whether an incoming transaction was AI-initiated. Both efforts leave a consequential question for business payments: how responsibility should be assigned when an authorized agent follows its technical instructions but breaches a procurement condition.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has added Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as policymaker members of BLOOM, its initiative for cross-border settlement using tokenized commercial bank deposits and regulated stablecoins. Announced on October 23, 2026, the expansion also brings in nine industry and multilateral participants, including Visa, Mastercard, Ripple, Maybank and the World Bank Group. BLOOM is working on whether digital money can be accepted and settled across jurisdictions, move between different ledger networks and carry programmable compliance controls. Those questions are particularly relevant where foreign exchange rules restrict convertibility or offshore holdings. Bank Negara Malaysia is separately running three domestic wholesale pilots involving ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits and expects to issue guidance by late 2026. Existing work includes a Maybank cross-border ringgit-to-Singapore-dollar transaction and a Ripple test of conditional trade finance payments. Neither establishes that BLOOM has resolved the regulatory and technical barriers to broader cross-border settlement.