Karla Barker 
Rain, a stablecoin infrastructure company valued at $1.95 billion, is expanding its partnership network. After building its business around Visa, the firm now adds Mastercard support. This move lets it offer both credit and prepaid cards to its enterprise clients.
Rain recently closed a $250 million Series C funding round. The company’s core service allows businesses to issue cards that let users spend stablecoins anywhere Visa is accepted. Behind the scenes, settlements for those transactions happen on-chain using stablecoins. The new Mastercard deal pushes Rain into what it calls a “dual card network” phase.
Dual-network strategy targets large institutions
The focus, according to Rain, is on big institutional clients. These are companies deeply tied to one payment network and may not have the flexibility to switch. By working with both Visa and Mastercard, Rain lets them add stablecoin settlement capabilities without changing their existing systems. Rain handles the on-chain treasury work, conversion, and settlement in the background. This might make it easier for banks and fintechs to experiment with blockchain-based payments without a major overhaul of their current infrastructure.
Stablecoins move beyond trading
The news fits into a broader trend. Mastercard has been pushing into stablecoins for a while. It acquired infrastructure firms like BVNK and ran pilots with Circle and Paxos. The goal is to use stablecoins as wholesale settlement assets inside its Multi-Token Network. Industry observers note that Rain’s model, where all customer settlements happen in stablecoins and all payments to Visa settle on-chain, is now being extended to Mastercard. This turns card networks themselves into interfaces for blockchain rails.
Other mainstream firms are also weaving stablecoins into their systems. Stripe recently rolled out full-stack stablecoin solutions, letting merchants accept stablecoins and settle in fiat. Coinbase has pushed USDC into commerce and remittances. A recent analysis argued that as regulatory clarity improves, stablecoins are rapidly shifting from being trading chips on exchanges to the settlement medium for enterprise payments and cross-border commerce. Rain and Mastercard now appear intent on testing that theory at scale.