Payment company Mastercard is joining hands with stablecoin payments infrastructure firm Borderless to launch a pilot project to review trust and verification systems for cross-border stablecoin remittances.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Aug. 5 that the project focuses on testing whether Mastercard’s crypto remittance authentication service, Crypto Credential, can provide the approval, compliance and risk-management signals needed for cross-border stablecoin payments.

The key is to build a system that lets blockchain transaction participants verify transaction reliability under shared standards. Mastercard provides common verification standards and assurance signals for blockchain transactions through Crypto Credential. The pilot also plans to explore new governance signals that could reduce friction in cross-border stablecoin payments.

Borderless pointed to compliance problems as one of the main factors holding back the spread of stablecoin payments. Kevin Lehtiniity (케빈 레흐티니티), co-founder and chief executive of Borderless, said correspondent banks solved this issue decades ago. He said that once compliance is verified at the remittance stage, participants trust it afterward and do not repeat the same process for each transaction. He added that Mastercard is applying that approach to digital asset payments.

Mastercard will not directly handle fund processing or settlement. Lehtiniity said Crypto Credential serves as a governance and verification layer, but Mastercard is not participating in the pilot’s fund processing or settlement. As a result, the project is closer to a test of standardising verification systems and compliance signals than of the payment infrastructure itself.

The pilot also aligns with Mastercard’s recent push to expand its stablecoin business. Mastercard completed a process on Aug. 4 to acquire stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK for $1.8 billion. Earlier, in June, it announced plans to expand card payment settlement availability to same-day and to weekends and public holidays, and it also unveiled a policy to expand stablecoin settlement using Circle’s USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple’s RLUSD and SoFi’s SoFiUSD.

The test is seen as an attempt by Mastercard to incorporate stablecoins as an element of a payment network with compliance and verification systems. If transaction participants can immediately reflect assurance signals in approvals, compliance and risk-management procedures, it could reduce delays and costs from repeated verification in cross-border stablecoin payments.

A key point to watch is how far Crypto Credential will be applied to real payment participants’ approval and verification systems. Attention is also on how new governance signals will link to Mastercard’s strategy to expand stablecoin settlement.