Mastercard Enables SoFiUSD Stablecoin Settlement Across $25b SoFi Card Program

The US Federal Reserve Board on September 24 published two proposed rules to flesh out stablecoin regulation under the GENIUS Act. The first proposal would require issuers under Fed supervision to back their outstanding tokens 100 percent at all times with qualifying reserve assets, limited to highly safe and liquid assets such as US dollar cash and deposits and US Treasuries with a remaining maturity of 93 days or less, held separately from the company's other assets and disclosed in a monthly breakdown. If reserve assets fall below the outstanding issuance, the issuer must report to the Fed and promptly close the shortfall, and if improvement proves difficult, liquidate assets to redeem the outstanding stablecoins. Redemption requests from users would in principle be honored at par within two business days, and issuers would also be required to hold capital separate from reserve assets to guard against system failures and fraud, put in place information security and anti-money laundering measures, and be barred from paying interest or yield solely for holding the tokens. The second proposal sets out the application process for banks under Fed supervision that issue stablecoins through subsidiaries, requiring them to submit business plans and financial information and obtain prior Fed approval. The proposals translate the GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, into actual supervisory rules, and will be open for public comment for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, after which the final content will be decided.

Seven of the UK's largest banks, including Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and HSBC, completed the world's first interbank blockchain transactions using tokenized deposits on September 24, 2026, clearing and settling remortgage completions and marketplace peer-to-peer payments on Quant's Overledger platform with support from EY and Linklaters. The program, formally the Grantham Business Tokenized Deposits initiative, connected the seven banks to the Bank of England's RTGS, Faster Payments and Open Banking infrastructure, with the deposits functioning as commercial bank money rather than a separate asset class. The same Quant platform was selected by The Clearing House for its US On-Chain Money Initiative, which will bring tokenized deposits to 25 of the largest US banks, including Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, HSBC, BNY Mellon, PNC, US Bank and Truist, targeting an H1 2027 launch aligned with the GENIUS Act enforcement cliff of January 18, 2027. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said in a July 2025 interview with The Times that he could not understand the need for stablecoins and believed tokenisation offered more value, a stance favoring tokenized deposits over stablecoins for wholesale settlement. Three digital bonds are planned for early 2027 settled with tokenized deposits, a dedicated company is being formed to govern the program, and a governance framework is being established to manage the transition from pilot to production.