The Cardano Foundation has joined Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program.

According to blockchain outlet U.Today on Sept. 15, the Cardano Foundation will work with Mastercard and other participants in payments and stablecoins through its participation.

The move is part of the blockchain track within Mastercard's program. The Cardano Foundation plans to collaborate in cross-border money transfers, business-to-business transactions and settlement. The foundation disclosed the participation on X, formerly Twitter, and said it is another step in linking public blockchain infrastructure with global money movement.

Cardano is also pursuing AI agent-based transaction support alongside an expansion of its payments infrastructure. Through Masumi, a formal integration into the x402 repository and official package has made it easier for AI agents to transact on Cardano.

With the integration, x402 payments are supported across the Cardano mainnet as well as preproduction and preview testnets. This aligns with an agent-based finance concept Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson (찰스 호스킨슨) has presented.

Hoskinson said the next stage of finance, commerce and search could increasingly shift to being agent-centric. He also explained that blockchain can provide the privacy, identity, payment and control layers AI agents need. This is also why Cardano is pursuing expanded payment cooperation and AI payment integration at the same time.

Work on network scalability is also under way. Cardano developers are preparing to demonstrate in a local cluster that Leios nodes can reach about 250 TxkB per second. That is about 1,000 transactions per second based on 250-byte transactions. The gap is large compared with the current Cardano mainnet cap of 4.5 TxkB per second.

Still, network stack adjustments and optimisation remain before it can be applied to the real internet environment. Carlos Lopez de la Rara (카를로스 로페스 데 라라), product manager at Input Output, said throughput has been secured and the remaining task is moving those figures into a real internet environment. Hoskinson said he expects Leios to be introduced to the Cardano mainnet by the end of 2026.

Cardano presented at once its payment network cooperation, expansion of AI agent payment infrastructure and scalability test results. The overall announcement showed an effort to link public blockchains to real money movement and automated transaction flows.

Connecting Cardano with the future of global payments. The Cardano Foundation has joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program. As part of its Blockchains track, we’ll engage with Mastercard and other participants working across payments and stablecoins on areas including… pic.twitter.com/eeZ6K2UrPY