Stripe and Plasma Add Five Currencies to Stablecoin Card Infrastructure
Oct. 20, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
Stripe announced on October 15, 2026, that it was adding multi-currency capabilities to its stablecoin card infrastructure, with Plasma as a primary design partner. The expansion supports spending in US dollars, euros, Brazilian reais, Mexican pesos and Colombian pesos. It also supports Open USD and payment stablecoins meeting the regulatory criteria of the US GENIUS Act.
The change is intended to let cardholders use non-dollar balances, including euros, for local-currency transactions without first converting them into US dollars. Stripe’s card infrastructure is powered substantially by Bridge, which it acquired in 2024. Stripe and Plasma are developing automated routing that would select a fiat or stablecoin balance at the point of sale, but that feature remains in development. The companies aim to extend the infrastructure from more than 30 countries currently supported to more than 100 by 2027. Those expansion and routing targets are plans, not capabilities available today.
Stripe announced on October 15, 2026, that it was adding multi-currency capabilities to its stablecoin card infrastructure, naming Plasma as a primary design partner. The expansion supports spending in five fiat currencies: the US dollar, euro, Brazilian real, Mexican peso and Colombian peso. Its central change is that a cardholder with a non-dollar balance, such as euros, can make a local-currency transaction without first converting that balance into US dollars.
The companies also plan to extend the infrastructure’s geographic reach. It currently supports more than 30 countries, and Stripe and Plasma are targeting more than 100 by 2027. Separately, their engineering teams are developing automated currency routing at the point of sale. That feature remains under development and should not be confused with the multi-currency capability announced in October.
Five fiat currencies and a defined stablecoin scope
The five named fiat currencies are USD, EUR, BRL, MXN and COP. Fiat currency is government-issued money; for cardholders, the relevant change is the ability to spend from a supported non-dollar balance without an intermediate conversion into dollars. The announcement does not establish support for every currency in which a cardholder might hold funds or make a purchase.
On the stablecoin side, the infrastructure supports Open USD, or OUSD, and payment stablecoins meeting the regulatory criteria of the US GENIUS Act. Stablecoins are digital assets intended to maintain a stable value relative to another asset, commonly a fiat currency. The distinction between supported fiat currencies and supported stablecoins matters: the list of currencies available for card spending does not, by itself, identify every digital asset a cardholder can use.
The verified announcement names five fiat currencies. Although some trade reports included the British pound, the official announcement and primary company statements did not list it among the newly supported currencies. Likewise, some reports identified USDC as a supported launch stablecoin, while the official announcement named OUSD and described other eligible stablecoins by reference to GENIUS Act criteria. The announced scope is narrower than those accounts suggest.
Reducing the need for dollar conversion
For a cardholder holding euros, the practical benefit is a more direct route to a local-currency purchase. Instead of first changing the balance into US dollars, the card infrastructure can support the transaction from that non-dollar balance. That addresses a specific limitation in dollar-centered stablecoin card arrangements, rather than changing how every card transaction is funded or settled.
Stripe’s stablecoin card infrastructure is powered substantially by Bridge, the crypto rails company Stripe acquired in 2024. Plasma had previously relied on Rain for card issuance and program management in its consumer app, Plasma One. Those details place the new design partnership in context, but the announcement does not say that Rain has been replaced in Plasma One or describe any change to that app’s existing card arrangements.
The planned automated routing is a separate next step. Stripe and Plasma engineers are working on a system designed to choose a fiat or stablecoin balance dynamically at a point-of-sale terminal, without requiring the cardholder to make a manual selection. Because the work is still in development, the announcement does not establish when the feature will be available or how it will make that choice in an individual transaction.
Expansion plans and market response
The target of more than 100 countries by 2027 would be a substantial increase from the more than 30 currently supported. It is a target, not a statement that the additional markets are live. The companies have not identified the full set of countries in the information provided, so the geographic plan should not be read as a commitment to launch in any particular market.
Plasma’s native token, XPL, rose more than 8.4% in the 24 hours after the partnership announcement, alongside increased trading volume on centralized exchanges. The timing records a market response following the news, but it does not establish that the card announcement alone caused the price move. For the card infrastructure, the immediate development is support for the five named fiat currencies; automated routing and the wider country footprint remain plans.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.