Mastercard is preparing to sell banks and payment companies a new screening tool for stablecoin transfers, seeking to bring pre-transaction fraud and financial-crime checks to payments that move on public blockchains. The service, called Stablecoin Security, will assign risk scores to individual transfers by combining payment data with blockchain activity and delivering the result through an application programming interface, or API.
The company unveiled the product at Money20/20 USA and said it will first be deployed in North America. Mastercard expects commercial availability to expand globally in 2027. Borderless.xyz, a stablecoin payments network, and trade-payments firm Keyrails will be the first partners.
Stablecoin Security is designed for institutions that need to decide whether to approve, investigate or stop a payment before the funds are sent onchain. Mastercard said the service will assess fraud, scams, sanctions exposure and other financial-crime risks by examining the source of funds and the context surrounding a transaction across its payment lifecycle.
The approach would give banks a way to add blockchain-specific signals to the fraud-monitoring and compliance systems they already use for conventional payment rails. Rather than requiring institutions to build separate blockchain analytics workflows, Mastercard plans to provide the assessment through an API that can feed into their existing internal controls.
A response to increasingly complex stablecoin transfers
Mastercard cited research from the Bank for International Settlements showing why simple address-level checks may be inadequate for many stablecoin payments. The BIS study examined 593 million stablecoin transfer events contained within 141 million Ethereum transactions during 2025.
Nearly 60% of those stablecoin transfer events occurred within complex, multi-step transactions rather than straightforward transfers from one wallet to another, according to the BIS. A single onchain transaction can involve several token movements and smart-contract interactions, making it harder for a compliance team to understand the practical purpose and destination of a payment by looking only at the first sending address and final receiving address.
That complexity is especially relevant for institutions considering stablecoins for cross-border settlement, treasury operations and commercial payments. In those settings, a firm may need to assess a transfer’s counterparty, transaction history and potential exposure to restricted entities while retaining the speed associated with blockchain settlement.
Mastercard’s proposed system places that assessment before a transaction is completed. The company has not disclosed pricing or technical thresholds for its risk scores, including how institutions will be expected to respond when a payment receives a high-risk result. Banks and payment firms would ultimately set their own policies for approving, delaying or escalating flagged transactions.
Borderless.xyz and Keyrails provide early payment use cases
The first two partners operate in areas where stablecoins are increasingly being explored as settlement tools rather than solely as trading assets.
Mastercard described Borderless.xyz as a network connecting financial institutions to licensed stablecoin providers in more than 113 countries and across 72 currencies. Its participation gives Stablecoin Security an early route into international payment corridors, where parties may face different regulatory standards, currency controls and counterparties in multiple jurisdictions.
Keyrails focuses on high-value cross-border trade payments, particularly in emerging markets, according to Mastercard. Trade payments can involve more documentation and more intermediaries than ordinary consumer transfers, leaving institutions to reconcile blockchain settlement with established sanctions, anti-money-laundering and fraud processes.
Both companies have previously participated in Mastercard’s Start Path Blockchain and Digital Assets program. Borderless.xyz also joined Mastercard’s Crypto Credential pilot in August alongside Infinia, Walapay and Koywe. That earlier project focused on making blockchain transfers easier to route using verified aliases or credentials, while the new product is aimed at assessing the risk surrounding the transfer itself.
Together, the projects show Mastercard building services around the payment layer of stablecoin use: identifying participants, connecting payment providers, moving funds across currencies and screening transactions before settlement.
BVNK acquisition expands Mastercard’s stablecoin infrastructure
The Stablecoin Security rollout also follows Mastercard’s purchase of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK. Mastercard said it completed the acquisition in August, after announcing in March an agreement that could be worth as much as $1.8 billion.
Last week, Mastercard introduced its Global Money Platform, a single API that combines fiat and stablecoin accounts, real-time currency conversion, card spending and payouts to local bank accounts. The company described the platform as its first major BVNK integration.
Mastercard plans to incorporate BVNK into its Stablecoin Security strategy next year. That would connect the company’s risk-screening plans with infrastructure that supports the holding, conversion and movement of stablecoins and conventional currencies.
The sequencing is commercially practical. A payment network offering stablecoin settlement tools to regulated financial institutions also needs controls that can be integrated into their risk operations. Risk scoring does not remove an institution’s regulatory responsibilities, but it could reduce the operational friction of reviewing blockchain activity separately from the payment instruction that triggered it.
Compliance moves closer to the point of payment
Stablecoin transfers have often been assessed after funds have reached a blockchain, using transaction-monitoring tools to trace assets and identify suspicious patterns. Mastercard’s proposal shifts part of that review to the authorization stage, closer to the controls banks use before sending a wire or approving a card payment.
That model could be particularly useful when a payment involves smart contracts, token swaps or several linked transfers. The BIS findings cited by Mastercard suggest these multi-step transactions are common enough that institutions need more than a basic screening process for individual wallet addresses.
The product’s adoption will depend on whether financial institutions view Mastercard’s scoring as sufficiently accurate, explainable and compatible with their own compliance rules. It will also depend on the range of stablecoins, blockchains and payment flows covered when the service reaches commercial availability.
For Mastercard, Stablecoin Security extends its effort to position stablecoin payments within the same operational framework as other regulated payment activity, while acknowledging that onchain transfers generate transaction patterns conventional systems were not built to interpret.
Want deeper insight into stablecoins and regulation? Explore this detailed stablecoin regulation guide next.
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