Mastercard has broadened its collaboration with Circle, allowing payment acquirers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa to settle card transactions in Circle’s dollar- and euro-pegged stablecoins, USDC and EURC. The move, which extends earlier pilots between the two companies, is designed to speed up merchant payouts and cut foreign-exchange and correspondent-banking costs within Mastercard’s global network. Circle separately announced a partnership with financial-software provider Finastra that will integrate USDC settlement into Finastra’s Global PAYplus platform, used by banks handling more than $5 trillion in cross-border payments each day. By embedding a blockchain-based settlement option inside widely used banking infrastructure, the companies aim to give financial institutions a regulated, off-the-shelf way to experiment with faster digital settlement while maintaining existing compliance and currency-conversion processes. The twin agreements underscore the growing traction of stablecoins in mainstream payments as regulators worldwide debate new rules for the sector.