Merchant Payments

SoFi Bank has moved its entire $25 billion card program onto stablecoin settlement, becoming the first nationally chartered bank to settle transactions in its own token, SoFiUSD, across Mastercard’s global network. For institutional investors, the launch is a live test of whether a regulated US bank can run stablecoin rails at scale without pushing any new operational burden onto merchants.

• SoFi is converting its full $25 billion card program to settlement in SoFiUSD, its OCC-overseen bank-issued stablecoin.
• The transition went live on Tuesday, six months after SoFi and Mastercard first announced their partnership in March.
• SoFiUSD is redeemable 1:1 for US dollars and backed mostly by cash reserves, per the company.

• $25B full size of SoFi’s card program now settling in SoFiUSD
• 6 mo. gap between March partnership deal and Tuesday’s go-live
• 1:1 SoFiUSD redemption ratio backed mostly by cash reserves

SoFi Bank said merchants accepting its cards will not have to hold stablecoins, build new infrastructure, or alter how they operate to receive settlement in SoFiUSD, according to its report on the launch. Debit and credit transactions on the $25 billion program now settle on Mastercard’s global payments network through the token rather than traditional rails.

Anthony Noto Says Merchants Get Cash With No New Setup

SoFi CEO Anthony Noto framed the launch as a settlement-speed upgrade rather than a product merchants need to adopt directly. Any merchant on SoFi’s Big Business Banking platform can receive settlement funds instantly into a SoFi Bank account and withdraw them as cash, free of charge, around the clock.

Merchants do not need to hold stablecoins, build new infrastructure, or change how they operate. That means businesses have faster access to their money via the speed of blockchain, with the safeguards of a bank.

Anthony Noto, CEO, SoFi

SoFi said it is in active discussions with major US merchants about settling through stablecoins directly, spanning large multinational retailers and technology service platforms. That pipeline suggests the zero-friction pitch to card-accepting businesses is a bridge toward direct stablecoin adoption by larger counterparties, not the end state.

First National Bank on Mastercard’s Stablecoin Rail

SoFi Bank, N.A. issues SoFiUSD as a nationally chartered institution regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, distinguishing it from stablecoins issued by non-bank entities. The token is redeemable 1:1 for dollars and backed primarily by cash reserves, and SoFi says it is the first stablecoin issued by a nationally chartered bank.

Mastercard opened its card settlement infrastructure to SoFiUSD and other stablecoins in June, laying the groundwork for Tuesday’s launch. The March partnership announcement to a live production rollout took six months.

Mastercard’s Sherri Haymond, its Global Head of Digital Commercialization, said stablecoins matter only when they address problems merchants already face, positioning the SoFi rollout as a commercial use case rather than a speculative pilot.

Kraken Listing and Cross-Border Push Come Next

Kraken listed SoFiUSD earlier this month, giving the token secondary-market liquidity before its Mastercard settlement role went fully live. SoFi and Mastercard also said they will explore cross-border payments and remittances routed through SoFiUSD on the network, a use case that would test the token beyond domestic card settlement.

SoFi’s advantage is scale already in place: a $25 billion existing card book converting in one move, rather than a new product waiting on adoption.

The CCS read. The real signal here is not the merchant messaging but the bank charter. An OCC-regulated issuer running $25 billion in card settlement through its own token gives compliance teams at other banks a working template to point to when they build their own stablecoin cases internally, well before regulators force the question.

SoFi has not set a timeline for converting the merchants it is in active talks with to direct stablecoin settlement, leaving that expansion, and the cross-border remittance pilot with Mastercard, as the next milestones to watch.