A consortium supported by a who’s who of the payments, banking, and crypto industries has launched a new stablecoin, Open USD. The reserve-backed stablecoin is the brainchild of Zach Abrams, founding CEO of Open Standard and co-founder of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, which was bought by payment processing firm Stripe in 2024. “Existing stablecoins have great strengths, but to use them at scale, businesses need something that’s open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests,” Abrams said in a statement. Open Standard’s founding users include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Western Union, Blackrock, Standard Chartered, Google, IBM, Coinbase, OKX, Solana, Ripple, and Aave among more than 140 companies.…
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Federal Credit Unions to Test Stablecoins, Digital Assets
Stablecore program seeks to prepare credit unions for digital asset adoption
Digital asset infrastructure provider Stablecore has joined forces with two U.S. federal credit union organizations to launch a program intended to help the small lenders evaluate stablecoin, tokenized deposit and digital asset products as adoption grows. Together with Circuit, a research and development Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) and Curql, a fintech investment organization with more than 160 credit union members, Stablecore’s initiative will allow participating credit unions to test and offer stablecoin and digital asset services. These include stablecoins, tokenized deposits, Bitcoin, on and offramps, and staking, among other things. The program will provide education to both staff and members of credit unions, in order to prepare them for…
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Mastercard Launches Payment System for AI Agents
Agent Pay for Machines supports many payment types, from cards to stablecoins
Mastercard has unveiled a new payment system for AI agents, designed to permit secure and permissioned transactions to be settled across its payment network at machine speed. Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M) envisions a future in which businesses create services AI agents can buy and use. Operating at machine speed, these agents will transact continuously with each other at high speed, executing trains of transactions including microtransactions. Mastercard said in a statement that it believes this will “unlock a massive new wave of innovation, business models and economic activity, where any company, from solopreneurs to the largest enterprises, can become a virtual powerhouse.” It gives the example of a florist…
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Mastercard Adds Stablecoin Settlement Support
Circle, Ripple, SoFi, and PayPal stablecoins are among those supported
Mastercard today announced plans to make it easier to settle transactions by expanding its intraday, weekend, and holiday settlement capabilities via regulated stablecoins. Settlement with fiat currency is also supported. The goal is to offer greater flexibility for card issuer banks and merchant acquirer financial institutions, which have to manage settlement timing and liquidity without disrupting existing processes. Mastercard said these upgrades are particularly relevant to settlements where stablecoins bring big benefits, including cross-border payments, corporate treasury management, and liquidity needs outside of traditional banking hours. Mastercard will support settlement using Circle’s USDC, Ripple’s RLUSD, SoFi’s SoFiUSD, and three Paxos-issued stablecoins: USDG, USDP, and PayPal’s PYUSD. These stablecoin payments will…
