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Mastercard acquires a stablecoin company for $1.8 billion, exploring whether the future of AI payments will move on-chain — though real on-chain payment volumes remain negligible compared to card networks.
This article provides an introduction to Visa and Mastercard as card networks, explaining their roles in facilitating transactions and their key responsibilities in the payment ecosystem.
China Merchants Bank Mastercard RMB debit card now officially supports Apple Pay, enabling RMB settlement, not consuming foreign exchange purchase quota, and no currency conversion fees, making it the current best choice for domestic users for overseas payments (including AI subscriptions).
Mastercard announced Agent Pay, a product enabling AI agents to make direct payments to other agents at machine speed with settlement in seconds, prompting discussion on compelling use cases that require such speed.
Brazil's Pix instant payment system is facing commercial and geopolitical pressure from Visa, Mastercard, and the US administration, which allege anti-competitive practices despite Pix's massive growth in transaction volume.