Payments and financial services technology provider Fiserv is entering the stablecoin business. The company plans to launch a digital asset platform that includes a new stablecoin (FIUSD) that will be added to Fiserv’s banking and payments infrastructure by the year’s end. The platform will help the firm’s regional and community bank clients embrace stablecoins’ entry into the traditional finance space. FIUSD presents Fiserv customers with access to a new, more efficient and interoperable digital asset service for their banking and payment flows. Offering the coin across Fiserv’s network, which includes relationships with roughly 10,000 financial institutions and 6 million merchant locations worldwide, will “provide instant scale for FIUSD while creating a digital asset network that clients can use to build new products and services.” Fiserv intends to use stablecoin infrastructure from Paxos and Circle with the goal of making it interoperable with several stablecoins, and it will be available to Fiserv clients through the Solana blockchain. In addition, the company is exploring the use of deposit tokens to maintain the benefits of stablecoins in a more capital-friendly structure for banks. Fiserv Chief Operating Officer Takis Georgakopoulos said that the new effort will help “democratize access” in the stablecoin market. By offering FIUSD across Mastercard’s global payments network, people and businesses can use the new programmable blockchain-based token across more than 150 million merchants. Fiserv and Paypal are partnering to build future interoperability between FIUSD and PayPal USD (PYUSD), to allow consumers and businesses to move funds domestically and internationally. These moves, would add drastic scale, opening stablecoins to thousands of financial institutions and PayPal’s base of more than 430 million consumers and 36 million merchants. It also joins a fast-growing market of stablecoin issuers that includes a consortium of large banks, major retailers such as Amazon and Walmart and early mover banks such as Societe Generale and Vantage Bank.