Stablecoins have had settlement volume for a while. What they have lacked is an easy way for an ordinary person to spend one at an ordinary merchant. Marqeta and Zerohash announced a partnership on July 22 that closes that gap by wiring stablecoin balances directly into Marqeta’s card issuing platform. Under the deal, Zerohash handles custody, compliance, and liquidity for the digital dollar balance, while Marqeta manages card issuance and network relationships, so a Marqeta customer can launch a stablecoin backed card without building any of that infrastructure itself. Cardholders spend digital dollars at any merchant that accepts a standard card; the merchant is paid in fiat, exactly as it would be on a normal transaction.
The timing is the real story. Zerohash and Marqeta said stablecoin monthly transaction volume hit $7.2 trillion in February 2026, passing the US ACH network’s $6.8 trillion for the first time. That volume has mostly moved between exchanges, treasuries, and institutional wallets. Card rails are the piece that turns settlement volume into everyday consumer spending, which is why zerohash CEO Edward Woodford framed the deal as making stablecoins “a seamless part of everyday payments and money movement,” not just a treasury instrument.
The more durable signal is the division of labor itself. Zerohash absorbs the custody and compliance risk that has kept most card platforms from touching stablecoins directly, and Marqeta keeps its existing issuing and network relationships untouched. That template, compliance vendor plus issuing platform, looks like the path other processors will copy rather than build in house, following the same enterprise packaging logic Visa used to turn stablecoin settlement into a managed product earlier this month.
Source: GlobeNewswire
