SoFi Moves Its $25 Billion Card Program to Stablecoin Settlement on Mastercard
SoFi Bank has switched its whole card program to stablecoin settlement on Mastercard’s network. That’s roughly $25 billion a year in debit and credit card volume, now settling in SoFiUSD, the dollar token SoFi issues itself. It went live on September 22.
SoFi says it’s the first national bank to do this. Who’s doing it is what makes it news. SoFi Bank, N.A. holds a national charter and is supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. So a regulated bank is moving its own payments business onto a blockchain, using a token it issues itself.
What actually changes
Settlement is the plumbing behind every card swipe. Once a purchase is approved, money still has to move between the card issuer, Mastercard and the merchant’s bank. That usually runs on wires and batch cycles that pause for weekends and holidays.
With SoFiUSD the settlement leg runs on-chain. Merchants never touch the token. They don’t hold stablecoins or build anything new. SoFi says funds land instantly in their SoFi Bank accounts and can be taken out as cash at any hour, free.
SoFiUSD is backed one-to-one by dollar reserves, mostly cash. It isn’t a bank deposit and has no FDIC or SIPC cover. SoFi began issuing it in late 2025 and opened it to app users in May 2026. It lives on Solana and Ethereum, with most of the supply on Solana, where transactions settle in under a second and cost a fraction of a cent.
Mastercard’s multi-coin network
Mastercard first announced the SoFi integration in March. It slots into a wider setup where Mastercard accepts several stablecoins for settlement (USDC, PYUSD, USDG, USDP and RLUSD) across chains including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum and XRPL. Early participants include Cross River, Lead Bank, CBW Bank and Nuvei.
Every other coin on that list comes from a non-bank issuer. SoFiUSD comes from a bank. Visa got to on-chain settlement first, with USDC on Solana for US banks in late 2025, but it settles in Circle’s coin. SoFi settles in its own.
Mastercard’s Sherri Haymond said stablecoins become meaningful when they solve real problems. Weekend settlement delays are a real problem for merchants. This one solves it without asking them to learn anything.
Why a bank wants its own coin
The reason is the float. Every dollar sitting behind USDC earns interest for Circle. Every dollar behind SoFiUSD earns it for SoFi. Push $25 billion a year of card settlement through your own token and you keep a steady pool of reserves on your own books.
The bigger lever is Galileo. SoFi owns the payments processor, which runs card programs for a long list of other fintechs, and says Galileo will extend stablecoin settlement to more of its card clients. SoFi’s own program proves the setup works. Galileo is how it spreads.
SoFi and Mastercard say cross-border payments and remittances are next, and SoFi is talking to retailers about similar setups. Remittances are where settlement speed and fees hurt most, so that’s the market to watch.
Banks spent years watching crypto firms earn interest on dollars that used to sit in bank accounts. SoFi is taking some of it back.