Crypto Exchanges

Story: Ripple and Coinbase Join Mastercard’s 30-Partner AI Payment Network

By Bruce Buterin

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XRP's Market Position Right Now. XRP is trading around $1.11. It's down roughly 6% over the past week, which isn't great, but the…

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Why the XRP Ledger Fits Here. The XRP Ledger already handles fast, low-cost transactions — it's not being retrofitted for AI…

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Mastercard just pulled back the curtain on something pretty big. The payments giant named Ripple among more than 30 partners for its new Agent Pay for Machines service — a…

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The service handles transactions across cards, accounts, and stablecoins. Mastercard's chief product officer made clear that speed alone isn't the whole game here — trust and…

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Flare founder Hugo Philion said exactly that — Ripple and XRP were dismissed for years because of how closely the project courted traditional finance.

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It's a bit of a full-circle moment, honestly.

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XRP is trading around $1.11. It's down roughly 6% over the past week, which isn't great, but the broader picture holds: market cap sits near $69 billion, putting XRP sixth among…

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And that gap between price action and partnership news is kind of interesting. Short-term traders probably aren't thrilled with the weekly chart.

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Related: Ripple Backs XRP Ledger Developers With x402 Payment Toolkit for AI Agents

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The XRP Ledger already handles fast, low-cost transactions — it's not being retrofitted for AI agents, it's basically built for exactly this kind of use case.

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RLUSD, Ripple's stablecoin, adds another layer. Stablecoin volumes across payments infrastructure have grown sharply in recent years, and Mastercard has been actively building…

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Whether the XRP Ledger can handle the throughput at real scale — when hundreds or thousands of AI agents are transacting simultaneously — is a question that probably won't get…

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But Ripple is in the room. And the room includes Coinbase and Stripe.

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Read also: Pyth Brings 24/7 Price Feeds for Stocks, Gold, and Oil to Coinbase and Kraken

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For a project that spent years fighting a high-profile legal battle with the SEC while simultaneously being mocked for wanting to work with banks, that's a meaningful shift.

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