[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Mastercard publicly gave a positive assessment of Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD at an XRP Ledger hackathon held in New York.

U.Today, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Oct. 25 that Mastercard representatives showed a favorable reaction to RLUSD during a session explaining partner pitch requirements at the event.

The remarks became known through a post on X, formerly Twitter, uploaded on Oct. 24 by Lost Art, an XRPL community member. He said, "Mastercard praised Ripple's RLUSD while explaining the partner pitch requirements for the XRPL Commons hackathon." Mastercard is one of the official partners of the two-day event held on Oct. 24 to 25.

The event is a 36-hour development competition hosted by XRPL Commons. XRPL Commons, a nonprofit organization, works to expand the XRP Ledger ecosystem. Developers, entrepreneurs, designers and finance professionals took part in the hackathon to develop new applications based on the XRP Ledger.

Total prize money was set at more than $40,000. Mastercard, Ripple, the XRP Ledger Foundation, Ledger, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and QuickNode will take part in mentoring and judging teams. The competition is run in 4 tracks: agentic finance, lending and borrowing, protocol innovation, and why not.

The hackathon in particular focused on autonomous payments using artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Participating teams will experiment with a structure that processes payments using XRP or RLUSD without human intervention in each payment cycle. The event showed that RLUSD is being used as a means for real-world payment and settlement experiments, rather than stopping at simple stablecoin issuance.

The overlap between Mastercard and Ripple has already moved beyond the level of developer events. Ripple previously announced in November 2025 that it was reviewing a plan with Mastercard, WebBank and cryptocurrency exchange Gemini to settle traditional credit card transactions using RLUSD. Under that structure, RLUSD is expected to be used as a blockchain-based settlement method between Mastercard and WebBank, the card-issuing bank.

Mastercard's strategy to expand stablecoins also underlies the cooperation between the two companies. Mastercard included Ripple in the first group of participating companies for its central bank digital currency partner program in August 2023. That group also included ConsenSys and Fireblocks.

Mastercard has also announced plans to launch new settlement options based on regulated stablecoins, including RLUSD, in June 2026. Supported stablecoins also include Circle's USDC, PayPal's PYUSD, Paxos' USDG and USDP, and SoFi USD. RLUSD's inclusion on the list shows that Mastercard views Ripple's stablecoin as a candidate for its settlement infrastructure.

The hackathon was scheduled ahead of Ripple's annual event, Swell 2026, to be held in New York on Oct. 27 to 29. In that context, Mastercard's remarks at the venue are read as a signal highlighting RLUSD's usefulness in the developer ecosystem and the potential expansion of payment networks. At this stage, what has been confirmed is limited to a positive assessment made at the event and past cooperation, and no additional commercialization plans or detailed rollout schedule have been disclosed.