BVNK and Marqeta dangle a payments lure for stablecoins
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With banks considering stablecoin strategies, a major challenge will be making the digital assets usable outside of crypto trading. That's leading to a technology race among payment firms that aren't issuing their own stablecoins but have plenty riding on the market's success. "It's the question of how consumers can actually use and spend their stablecoins," Keith Vander Leest, the U.S. general manager at BVNK, told American Banker. Marqeta, a firm that sells card-issuing technology, has partnered with BVNK, a firm that sells infrastructure that supports stablecoins. The Marqeta/BVNK deal is the first major deal BVNK has signed since Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK closed in August. The collaboration will enable card issuers to include stablecoin capabilities in digital wallets and cards, part of a push to get consumers and merchants to use the digital asset at the point of sale. "The real opportunity for stablecoins lies in connecting them with the infrastructure people and businesses already trust and use every day. That's the gap Marqeta is built to close," Anthony Peculic, chief strategy officer at Marqeta, told American Banker. While stablecoins are not widely used directly as currency to pay merchants, there is a growing push to make it easy for consumers or businesses to use stablecoins and the underlying technology to cut time and expense from payment processing...
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