Solana Foundation launches enterprise developer platform, naming Mastercard and Western Union
The Solana Developer Platform starts with issuance and payments modules, with a trading component due later this year.
Solana Foundation launched the Solana Developer Platform, a unified enterprise interface aimed at tokenization and stablecoin payments. The foundation said Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union are early users of the product.
The rollout puts Solana’s institutional push into a more productized form, as public chains compete to become the default rails for tokenized real-world assets and stablecoin settlement. Solana is pitching SDP as a single entry point for enterprise developers building on its network, with initial emphasis on issuance and payments rather than consumer crypto applications.
Solana framed the opportunity around the size of the tokenized real-world asset market. Tokenized RWAs represent a $328 billion market, according to rwa.xyz, and the foundation pointed to distribution that still skews heavily toward Ethereum, which holds more than half of the total value. The same data cited in the announcement put Solana’s share at 6.3%, underscoring both the growth runway and the competitive gap SDP is designed to narrow.
Catherine Gu, head of product at Solana Foundation, cast the early roster of users as evidence that enterprises are looking for tooling that reduces integration friction. “The early interest we’ve seen from enterprises and institutions signals strong demand,” Gu said.
The foundation said SDP will launch with three core modules that map to common institutional workflows. The issuance module is designed to deploy tokenized RWAs on Solana. A payments module is intended to facilitate fiat and stablecoin flows. A third trading module is planned for later this year, with support for atomic swaps, vaults, and onchain forex.
Solana also tied named early users to specific payment and settlement use cases. Mastercard is set to use SDP for stablecoin settlement, the foundation said. Worldpay is positioned around merchant payments and settlement. Western Union is focused on cross-border payments.
Executives at two of the early users framed the effort as additive to existing rails rather than a wholesale replacement. “The next phase of digital asset innovation will be defined by practical use cases that integrate seamlessly with existing financial systems,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard.
At Western Union, Malcolm Clarke, vice president of digital assets, emphasized that the company’s interest is in extending its current model. Clarke said SDP is “not a replacement for our network,” and described it as a way to expand use cases and bring more cross-border activity.
The foundation positioned SDP as part of a broader attempt to make Solana more credible for enterprise production workloads. It pointed to the Alpenglow upgrade in 2025 as a technical step aimed at making the network more “enterprise-ready” by boosting transaction throughput.
Solana also referenced stablecoin settlement momentum on the chain, noting that Visa launched USDC settlement for U.S. banks on Solana in December, though the year was not specified.
Even with high-profile early users, Solana is entering a crowded market for enterprise blockchain tooling. The Ethereum ecosystem has established infrastructure offerings such as Consensys’ Infura, and competing institutional on-ramps including Consensys’ Linea layer-2. Coinbase’s Base, also an Ethereum layer-2, has modular components for checkout, APIs, and commerce payments that Solana positioned as overlapping with SDP’s payments focus. Ripple’s enterprise-focused blockchain offerings, including XRP Ledger, also target financial institutions with an emphasis on cross-border payments.
What remains unclear is how quickly SDP’s roadmap will translate into production deployments beyond the initial modules. Solana Foundation said the trading module is due later this year, but it did not provide a specific launch date or additional implementation details for the module set beyond the listed features.
