Mastercard wants to score stablecoin payments for fraud and sanctions risk before the money moves

Mastercard is bringing its fraud screening to stablecoins. The company announced Stablecoin Security on Monday at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas, a service that pairs Mastercard's payment data with blockchain analysis to spot fraud, scams, sanctions links and other illicit-finance risks, including before any money reaches the blockchain.

Financial institutions plug it in through an API. It looks at the context of a transaction, the origin of the funds and any exposure to restricted parties, then produces a risk score before the payment is completed, so an institution can let it through or send it for review. "Stablecoins are creating new possibilities for value exchange, but financial institutions need the right intelligence and controls to participate with confidence," said Ann Johnson, Mastercard's executive vice president for security solutions.

Mastercard pointed to a Bank for International Settlements study of 2025 activity across 141 million Ethereum transactions, which found that close to 60% of stablecoin transfers sat inside transactions with several steps rather than straightforward payments from one party to another.

North America gets it first; Mastercard expects to offer it commercially worldwide in 2027. Its first partners are Borderless.xyz, which connects financial institutions to licensed stablecoin providers in more than 113 countries and 72 currencies, and Keyrails, which handles high-value cross-border trade payments. Mastercard says it will widen the service's reach in 2027, including through BVNK, the stablecoin infrastructure company it acquired in August.