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Cryptostablecoins

Exclusive: Stablecoin startup Rain is worth $1.95 billion and plans to issue cards with Mastercard in a push to woo institutional customers

By
Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss
Crypto Reporter
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By
Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss
Crypto Reporter
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May 4, 2026, 8:00 AM ET
Mastercard has made its own bets on stablecoins, recently acquiring the startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion.
Mastercard has made its own bets on stablecoins, recently acquiring the startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion.Michael Nagle—Bloomberg/Getty Images

The buzzy stablecoin startup Rain is now working with the two largest card networks. The company announced on Monday that it was offering credit and prepaid cards with Mastercard. Rain previously only worked with Visa to issue cards. 

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Rain also said it was working with Mastercard to explore how to settle payments with the public company using stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar. 

Valued at $1.95 billion in a January fundraise, Rain helps its clients launch cards backed by users’ stablecoin deposits, among other services. The startup, for example, works with neobanks who want to let their customers use their crypto deposits, instead of U.S. dollars, to settle charges on their credit cards.  

The startup’s new partnership with Mastercard lets Rain target larger institutions who are already wedded to one payments network, Farooq Malik, cofounder and CEO, told Fortune.

“As we’ve grown into the enterprise, we realized that there’s a lot of enterprise players that have multi-year relationships,” Malik added. “They are really interested in the innovation, but they are not in a position to kind of renegotiate midstream.”

Stablecoins storm Wall Street

Rain’s partnership with Mastercard comes as legacy tech and finance companies increasingly integrate stablecoins into their payments capabilities, especially after President Donald Trump signed into law in July the Genius Act, or legislation that established regulatory guidelines for stablecoins. 

Meta last Wednesday rolled out on Wednesday an option for creators in Colombia and the Philippines to receive payouts from the tech giant in stablecoins. Shopify partnered with Coinbase and Stripe in June to roll out stablecoin payments to its users. Even Elon Musk’s SpaceX uses stablecoins for its corporate treasury. 

And, in March, Mastercard announced that the payments network signed a deal to acquire the stablecoin firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion.

“We think the market will emerge when many partners in a fairly vibrant, innovative value chain will lift the tide altogether,” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, in an interview after the company’s acquisition of BVNK.

Rain isn’t the only startup to put significant resources into stablecoin-backed cards. Its competitor Bridge, which the fintech giant Stripe acquired in February 2025 for $1.1 billion, has also added that capability to its portfolio of services. In March, the Stripe-owned startup expanded its partnership with Visa to eventually include cards issued in more than 100 countries. 

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