The speed of funds transfers over the past few years has improved, but now even the system behind those transfers is starting to change.

Companies have been gradually warming up to new technologies that are beginning to alter how money is transferred between people and across countries.

Last week, Mastercard announced it would acquire stablecoin-infrastructure company BVNK for up to $1.8 billion.

Stablecoins, available only in digital format, are linked to real currencies like the US dollar, and like Bitcoin, they run on blockchain networks. But like a currency, they are designed to hold a stable value.

The UK-based BVNK, which has built expertise and infrastructure to bridge fiat currencies and stablecoins, enables businesses across 130+ countries to send and receive funds using major blockchain networks.

Mastercard, an existing leader in payments, has acknowledged that the BVNK deal expands its “end-to-end support of digital assets and value movement across currencies, rails and regions”.

Money’s New Road

Mastercard is known mostly for its card business, where it acts as an intermediary between banks and merchants when a card is tapped or swiped.

Stablecoins introduce a different way to make payments. These payments take place on blockchain networks, where transactions are initiated and settled on the same system.

In the traditional system, a transaction is considered complete only when the money reaches the destination account.

But when blockchain is involved, the ownership of the money, so to speak, changes on a shared ledger and the update itself completes the transaction. It works that fast even when it is a cross-border payment.

By acquiring BVNK, Mastercard is extending its network so it can support both types of payments — card-based as well as on-chain.

The process does not depend on multiple systems handing off the transaction from one to another.

Who Else Is Moving

Mastercard is not the only network preparing for this shift. In December last year, its biggest competitor, Visa, used stablecoins like USDC to settle transactions on blockchain networks.

Instead of waiting for the usual settlement cycle between banks, Visa has shown that funds could be moved and settled directly on the blockchain.

The system, Visa says, has seamless interoperability, which bridges traditional payments with blockchain‑based infrastructure.

The next logical question to ask is: will stablecoins also show up in everyday card use?

Yes, it is possible, but it depends on how the systems are integrated.

Today, when a card is swiped or tapped, the payment authorisation happens instantly, but the final settlement between banks takes place later.

With stablecoins in the picture, both steps can happen together, where the transaction is initiated and settled in one go.

If Mastercard brings stablecoins to its card network, a card payment could, in theory, initiate a blockchain-based transfer where a card swipe and the settlement happen at the same time.

In fact, Mastercard has already started linking stablecoins to cards, so they can be spent anywhere its network is accepted, just like regular payments.

The card user will not experience any change, but the backend would run differently.

That wider change will largely depend on how quickly financial institutions warm up to the idea of accepting stablecoins.

For now, Mastercard is investing in the capability so that if the financial world starts moving in that direction, it already has a way to join them.

Possibilities For India’s RuPay

India has built strong digital payment systems through the National Payments Corporation of India. The RuPay network primarily supports card payments across the country, but it has not hidden its international ambitions.

In fact, RuPay has already gone global, but in a small way. It has tied up with countries like Singapore, the UAE, Bhutan and Nepal so that RuPay cards can be accepted there.

But this way of growth is slow and time-consuming.

Blockchain-based systems, on the other hand, offer a different route, where instead of going country by country, payments can move on blockchain networks ready to work across borders.

That way, any cross-border transfer could be completed on the RuPay network, without creating an ecosystem in each location.

It may sound like an overkill right now, but the option is there. And it looks very different from the step-by-step expansion route RuPay has followed so far.

This series is brought to you in partnership with Algorand.