Mastercard Backs Venly: The Quiet Rise of Stablecoin Infrastructure

PARIS, France – September 29, 2026 — If you want to understand where the smart money is moving in the latter half of this decade, look past the retail trading frenzy and focus on the plumbing. The era of digital assets as purely speculative instruments is rapidly closing, replaced by a much more lucrative, albeit less flashy, reality: enterprise-grade infrastructure. This paradigm shift was on full display at the Hôtel de l'Industrie in Paris on September 22, where Mastercard announced the winners of its France-Belgium semifinal for the Mastercard For Fintechs 2026 program.

Emerging victorious from a highly competitive pool were two companies perfectly encapsulating the current zeitgeist: Giskard AI, a French artificial intelligence testing firm, and Venly Finance, a Belgian startup building stablecoin payment rails for the B2B sector. While AI continues to dominate headlines, Venly’s recognition—complete with a trophy engraved "Mastercard For Fintechs 2026, Belux Winner"—signals a critical validation of stablecoins as legitimate, cross-border payment mechanisms by one of the world's most entrenched financial gatekeepers.

Legacy Payment Rails Meet Blockchain Infrastructure

To understand the why behind the buy, we must examine Mastercard's evolving multi-rail strategy. For years, traditional payment networks viewed blockchain technology with a mix of skepticism and defensive posturing. The initial foray involved crypto-linked debit cards, allowing users to spend their digital assets by instantly converting them to fiat at the point of sale. It was a consumer-centric play that kept the legacy rails firmly in control.

Venly’s success points to a deeper, more structural integration. The Willebroek-based company does not cater to retail day traders; it provides a unified API that allows neobanks, payment service providers (PSPs), and digital marketplaces to embed stablecoin accounts, conversions, and payouts directly into their existing platforms. By backing infrastructure providers like Venly, Mastercard is actively co-opting the technology that once threatened to bypass it, turning potential disruptors into foundational partners.

This is not an overnight pivot. Venly’s relationship with the payments giant dates back to May 2024, when it was selected for the Mastercard Start Path Blockchain and Digital Assets program. The progression from an accelerator participant to a regional champion underscores a deliberate strategy: identifying and nurturing the connective tissue that will link traditional fiat settlements with blockchain efficiency. As Benjamin Dessy, General Manager for Mastercard Belgium and Luxembourg, noted following the Paris semifinal, "This edition confirms the dynamism and quality of the fintechs in our region. Venly and Giskard AI respond to very topical challenges around digital assets and artificial intelligence. We are proud to see them carry the colours of Belgium and France at the European final in Milan."

Europe's Post-MiCA Vanguard

The geographical context of this victory cannot be overstated. Europe has established itself as the vanguard of digital asset regulation, and companies operating within its borders are reaping the institutional rewards. The Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which brought comprehensive oversight to stablecoin issuers and service providers starting in late 2024, fundamentally altered the competitive landscape.

Before MiCA, integrating crypto payouts was a compliance nightmare for traditional fintechs. Today, clear rules of the road have transformed stablecoins from regulatory liabilities into operational assets. Venly’s value proposition is inherently tied to this newfound clarity. Operating within the strict parameters overseen by authorities like the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA), the firm offers a compliant gateway for businesses that want the speed and cost-efficiency of borderless stablecoin transfers without assuming the immense regulatory burden of becoming a licensed Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) themselves.

This regulatory moat is precisely why European stablecoin APIs are currently outshining their less-regulated global counterparts in institutional pitch competitions. For a behemoth like Mastercard, partnering with or elevating a MiCA-compliant entity mitigates systemic risk while allowing the network to offer cutting-edge settlement options to its global clientele. It is a calculated embrace of regulated innovation.

Making Blockchain Invisible: The 'Crypto-as-a-Service' Boom

The true genius of Venly’s platform—and the likely reason it triumphed over other innovative semifinalists like Tranched, SPORTYNEO, Cashlab, and Peaky—lies in its architectural philosophy. The company is at the forefront of the "Crypto-as-a-Service" (CaaS) movement, which operates on a simple premise: for blockchain to achieve mass adoption, it must become entirely invisible to the end user.

"For us, this is another strong signal that stablecoins are moving from experimentation into real payment infrastructure," said Tim Dierckxsens, CEO and Founder of Venly, following the win. "Our focus has always been on making the underlying technology disappear: giving fintechs and payment companies a practical way to move money globally using stablecoins without forcing them to become blockchain companies themselves. Milan is the next step."

This abstraction layer is critical. When benchmarking Venly against other heavyweights in the B2B digital asset space, its specific niche becomes clear. While platforms like Fireblocks dominate institutional-grade custody and secure multi-party computation (MPC) for a wide array of tokens, and companies like BVNK offer broad crypto-native banking services, Venly is laser-focused on the transactional payment layer. Its API allows a marketplace to seamlessly disburse funds to global vendors in fiat-pegged stablecoins, settling in seconds rather than days, all while keeping the marketplace in full control of the customer relationship and user experience. The client never has to manage a private key, understand gas fees, or interact with a block explorer.

The Road to Milan and Market Momentum

Looking ahead, Venly and Giskard AI will carry the flag for Belgium and France at the European final in Milan on November 25, 2026. There, they will face off against regional winners from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. The stakes are substantial: the ultimate victor secures 100,000 euros in marketing support, preferential access to Mastercard's Start Path ecosystem, and bespoke mentoring from industry specialists and fintech partners.

However, regardless of the outcome in Milan, the broader market takeaway is already crystallized. Out of more than 240 applications across Europe—and 63 from the France, Belgium, and Luxembourg region alone—a stablecoin infrastructure provider was deemed one of the most impactful and relevant solutions for the future of financial services by a jury of legacy payment experts.

This is the maturation of market sentiment that we constantly track. The hype cycles of non-fungible tokens and algorithmic stablecoins have been washed away, leaving behind robust, utility-driven companies that solve actual friction points in global commerce. As AI fatigue begins to temper the hyperbolic valuations in the broader tech sector, investors and strategists are quietly rotating their attention toward the unglamorous, highly profitable business of moving money. Venly’s ascent through the Mastercard ecosystem is a textbook example of this rotation, proving that in the complex world of modern fintech, the most revolutionary technologies are the ones you never even notice are there.