What happened
- Specific facts/numbers: SoFi and Mastercard said stablecoin settlement is now live across SoFi Bank, N.A.’s debit and credit card program, with SoFi migrating its full card program to blockchain-based settlement and saying the program is expected to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume using SoFiUSD.
- Institutions involved: The rollout involves SoFi Technologies, SoFi Bank, N.A., Mastercard, and SoFiUSD, which SoFi describes as issued by its nationally chartered bank.
- Regulatory/technical context: The reviewed materials describe SoFiUSD as a fully reserved U.S. dollar stablecoin used for settlement across Mastercard’s global payments network; SoFi says it is issued by SoFi Bank, N.A., an OCC-regulated nationally chartered bank.
- What to watch next: Watch for broader issuer, acquirer, and merchant adoption on Mastercard rails and any expansion into cross-border or other money-movement use cases; otherwise, no next milestone was identified.
Why it matters
This is a live example of a bank-issued stablecoin being used for mainstream card settlement, which could reduce settlement friction without requiring merchants to change existing payment acceptance infrastructure.
HKMA Relevance
Direct: This is a card-network stablecoin-settlement move involving an OCC-regulated bank and Mastercard, a type of payments and tokenisation development that is directly relevant to the HKMA’s own central-banking and payments agenda.