{"slug": "mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move", "title": "Mastercard Makes Surprise XRP Ledger Move", "summary": "Mastercard has joined the upcoming XRP Ledger Hackathon in New York as a sponsor, scheduled for Oct. 24–25, 2025. The 36-hour event will feature four tracks focused on protocol innovation, agentic finance, lending, and borrowing, and will take place ahead of Ripple's Swell conference. This move follows Mastercard's expanding relationship with Ripple, including support for Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin settlement and participation in Ripple's CBDC Partner Program.", "body_md": "Payments Mastercard has joined an upcoming XRPL hackathon in New York as a sponsor.\n\nThe New York-headquartered firm will participate in the 36-hour $XRP Ledger Hackathon that is scheduled for Oct. 24–25.\n\nThe event will bring developers to New York to build and launch projects on the $XRP Ledger ahead of Swell. The much-awaited Ripple conference will take place the following week.\n\nThe hackathon includes four tracks focused on protocol innovation, agentic finance, lending and borrowing.\n\nTeams with existing projects have also been encouraged to add XRPL functionality.\n\n## Mastercard's relations with Ripple\n\nMastercard’s relationship with Ripple has gradually expanded over the past year.\n\nIn November 2025, Ripple announced a collaboration with Mastercard, WebBank and Gemini that revolves around Ripple’s $RLUSD stablecoin. The partnership came after Gemini launched an $XRP edition of its Mastercard credit card last August.\n\nThe card allows customers to earn rewards in $XRP, including up to 4% back on some purchases.\n\nMastercard subsequently took another major step toward blockchain-based settlement. In June 2026, the company said its network would support settlement with regulated stablecoins including Ripple’s $RLUSD. The company also listed the $XRP Ledger among the blockchain networks.\n\nMastercard’s relationship with Ripple predates the $RLUSD settlement plans. In 2023, Ripple was selected as one of the initial participants in Mastercard’s CBDC Partner Program.\n\nRipple and Mastercard have also appeared together in tokenization and institutional blockchain experiments.\n\nIn May, Ripple, JPMorgan, Ondo Finance and Mastercard were involved in a pilot that used the $XRP Ledger to complete a cross-border redemption of Ondo’s tokenized US Treasury fund.\n\nRipple has also made it to Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program, which was announced earlier this year.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move", "canonical_source": "https://cryptonews.net/news/altcoins/33354139/", "published_at": "2026-08-26 20:17:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 20:49:29.299222+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Mastercard", "Ripple", "XRP Ledger", "RLUSD", "WebBank", "Gemini", "JPMorgan", "Ondo Finance"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mastercard-makes-surprise-xrp-ledger-move.jsonld"}}