Mastercard Brings USDC and EURC Settlement to EEMEA in Regional First

Until now, Mastercard’s global stablecoin initiatives had largely focused on enabling consumers to spend through crypto-linked cards or to settle via stablecoins in select markets. With this expansion, Mastercard and Circle are empowering local acquiring institutions to directly receive settlement in stablecoins, offering a significant leap toward programmable and instantaneous digital trade in emerging markets.

Institutions such as Arab Financial Services (AFS) and Eazy Financial Services are the inaugural adopters of this capability. Through it, they can end up settling transactions in USDC or EURC, both fully reserves-backed tokens issued by Circle’s regulated affiliates and use these for onward settlement with merchants.

Dimitrios Dosis, President of Mastercard EEMEA, underscored the strategic ambition behind this shift. “This is a key move for Mastercard. Our strategic goal is to integrate stablecoins into the financial mainstream by investing in the infrastructure, governance, and partnerships to support this exciting payment evolution from fiat to tokenized and programmable money. Through our expanded partnership with Circle, we are taking bold steps in integrating their innovative use across our global network. We know that trust is essential to scale, and we are proud to play a leading role by applying our decades of experience in security and compliance to the stablecoin space,” he said. He further emphasized that Mastercard’s decades-long leadership in security and compliance forms the bedrock for scaling stablecoin adoption.

From Circle, Chief Business Officer Kash Razzaghi praised the initiative’s significance: “Expanding USDC settlement across Mastercard’s vast network of acquirers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is a pivotal step toward truly borderless, real-time commerce. Our expanded partnership with Mastercard will enable wider reach, global access, and scaled impact, so that USDC can become as ubiquitous as traditional payments. Together with Mastercard, we are advancing the role of stablecoins as a foundational tool for everyday financial activity worldwide.”

At the regional level, AFS CEO Samer Soliman highlighted the practical benefits, saying, “This innovation provides the future-ready infrastructure our clients need to stay competitive in an era of continuous market transformation. The new capability directly solves a key market need for greater liquidity and operational efficiency, significantly reducing the friction traditionally associated with high-volume settlements.”

Meanwhile, Eazy Financial Services’ Nayef Al Alawi described the development as "a new standard for digital settlement in the region,” one that underpins faster, safer, and more efficient payments.

The introduction of stablecoin settlement brings several tangible outcomes for the region. By settling transactions in USDC or EURC, acquirers sidestep traditional frictions such as foreign exchange fees or delays in clearing, boosting liquidity and operational efficiency. Stablecoins backed by regulated issuers like Circle also provide price stability and compliance assurances, both of which are critical for institutional participation in digital assets.

This development also builds on Mastercard’s broader stablecoin agenda, which already includes support for other digital currencies such as Paxos’s USDG, Fiserv’s FIUSD, and PayPal’s PYUSD. Through products such as Mastercard Move and the Multi-Token Network (MTN), the company is integrating tokenized money into use cases ranging from remittances to B2B flows, while reinforcing trust through its security frameworks, Crypto Credential and Crypto Secure.

Unlike coin-centric coverage that tends to focus on speculative angles or consumer adoption, this development centers on institutional adoption and regional firsts. The EEMEA program is not only a technical upgrade but also a structural transformation in how acquirers and merchants can interact with tokenized money. It signals a maturing environment where stablecoins are moving beyond experimental pilots into the infrastructure of mainstream commerce. By highlighting leadership perspectives from Mastercard, Circle, and regional financial service providers, this initiative is portrayed as both pragmatic and forward-looking, rather than speculative.