Payment Expert’s Fintech Unwrapped delivers the latest developing news that has shaped the sector over the course of the last week.
This week, Mastercard announced a new offline payment feature in the wake of several power outages affecting millions of European consumers.
Also this week, Samsung has partnered with Coinbase to allow its mobile customers to perform cross-border stablecoin payments, TrueLayer gained a new investor and partner, Ant International and HSBC continue to tokenised deposit, and Mollie eyes further growth for its Pay by Bank solution.
Mastercard seeks to prevent offline payment friction
Mastercard will launch a new offline payment capability across Europe in February 2027 to help consumers make payments when power or network connections fail.
This will be applicable to all Mastercard cardholders in Europe to make offline payments, as all terminals are required to support this by May 2027. Mastercard has already implemented offline payments in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia.
Mastercard’s offline payment function works by storing spending limits on the card during outages, with users still able to complete chip and PIN transactions. If a terminal loses its connection, the transaction can be approved locally, up to a limit of €200 per transaction set in advance by the cardholder’s bank. It is then submitted for clearing when the connection is restored.
Brice van de Walle, EVP of Core Payments at Mastercard, said: “When the power or network goes down, people still need to buy food, fuel and medicine. We’ve seen that offline payments can make a real difference. By expanding this technology across Europe, we can help people keep paying for the things they need, even when the unexpected happens.”
Mastercard cited the power blackouts that occurred in Spain and Portugal in April 2025 as a cause for the new offline payment solution.
Samsung opens stablecoin payments to mobile users in 60 countries
Samsung will now allow its users to pay with the USDC stablecoin directly from their Galaxy mobile phones in partnership with Coinbase.
Powered by the Samsung Wallet, mobile users will be able to send USDC directly from the digital wallet in seconds with zero transfer fees. This can also be transferred across borders for travelling spenders.
Samsung Wallet will also enable eligible users to send money to qualifying bank accounts in more than 60 countries, with funds delivered in the recipient’s local currency.
Woncheol Chai, EVP and Head of the Digital Wallet Team at the Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, said: “Sending money abroad should feel as convenient as using the wallet already on your phone.
“We’re bringing USDC transfers into Samsung Wallet so eligible Galaxy users can get started without installing another app or managing private keys themselves.”
TrueLayer gains new investment and partner in Pay by Bank push
TrueLayer received $27m in funding led by Italy’s CVP Venture Capital alongside a consortium of existing and new investors.
The additional capital will be used to expand TrueLayer’s Pay by Bank network across Europe, in particular Italy, a home market for the company which has built a base in Milan.
Francesco Simoneschi, Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, said: “We started TrueLayer with a simple belief: Europe deserves payment infrastructure built in Europe. Having Italy back that belief means a great deal to us personally, especially to our talented team in Milan, who work hard every day to build the future of European payments.”
Also this week, TrueLayer announced a partnership with SumUp which will allow the latter’s personal account users to top their bank accounts in seconds through the use of TrueLayer’s Pay by Bank method.
The feature went live in the UK earlier this year and has since been rolled out to Ireland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Ant International settled two tokenised deposits in two key corridors
HSBC and Ant International collaborated to perform tokenised deposits across two key payment corridors.
Using HSBC’s Tokenised Deposit Service, Ant International performed a pilot to settle tokenised deposit transactions:
Intra-UAE dirham transfers: Real-time, dirham-denominated tokenised deposit transactions within the UAE.
Cross-border US dollar payments initiated from the UAE: US dollar-denominated tokenised deposit transfers between the UAE and international markets, including Hong Kong and Singapore.
Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech and SVP at Ant International said: “This marks an important milestone in our journey towards achieving real-time treasury management across the globe. With the support of regional bank partners such as HSBC, we aim to establish a global treasury hub in the Middle East in the near future to better support our global operations.”
Mollie and GoCardless to scale Pay by Bank next year
Mollie is planning a wider launch of its Pay by Bank solution alongside existing partner GoCardless.
The payment method is already live in the UK and has recently been rolled out in the Netherlands.
Pay by Bank enables customers to pay directly from their bank accounts at the merchant’s checkout, while the merchant can integrate Molloie and GoCardless’ infrastructure to support the payment.
Mollie is able to scale its Pay by Bank solution by connecting to GoCardless’ 2,500 banking partners to support the account-to-account payment method.
Have a story that the industry needs to know to be featured on Fintech Unwrapped? Contact: [email protected]
If you would like to read more from Payment Expert this week, sign up to our weekly LinkedIn newsletter, ‘This Week In Payments’, featuring the biggest news stories and in-depth features from within fintech, payments, crypto and more.
