Mastercard has announced a partnership with Australian stablecoin platform Stables to provide USDC payments in the APAC (Asia Pacific) region.

The new Mastercard will be connected to the Stables crypto wallet, which only supports stablecoins. Card users will be able to pay at any outlets that support Mastercard cards. Funds will be debited from the balance of the Stables crypto wallet with automatic conversion to USDC.

“Mastercard is committed to delivering innovative payment solutions that give cardholders the freedom to spend their assets where, how and when they want. Stables is building a solution for the Web3 sector using Mastercard’s global payment network. The platform also uses various analytical tools, including CipherTrace and Ekata services to ensure trust and security”, ? said the head of Mastercard Australia on fintech Callan Hogan (Kallan Hogan).

Stables co-founder and CEO Erez Rachamim said the initiative was driven by the need for a “simple and affordable means” to leverage digital assets. In addition, these efforts are accompanied by an increased desire of digital asset owners to use a debit card to spend digital currencies. In a global survey by Marqeta, 82% of participants showed interest in such a solution. In addition, according to the survey, 55% of clients in Asia Pacific (APAC) are more comfortable investing in digital assets backed by reliable companies.

Using the Stables wallet, you can also place deposits in other stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD). However, all deposits are automatically converted into USDC without commission. The integration is expected to go live in June, in the second quarter of 2023. Mastercard payments in USDC will be available in Australia first. However, later this payment method will be available in Europe, the US, the UK and most of the Asia-Pacific region.

The Samsung Galaxy A54 has become more premium thanks to the use of a glass back cover, retains water protection and has acquired a new, more powerful platform. However, its camera still leaves much to be desired. DxOMark specialists rated it at 107 points.

This is the 85th place in the source rating, although it is the ninth place in the High-End segment. For the quality of photos, the novelty received 106 points, and the video was rated at 115 points.

At the same time, it cannot be argued that the smartphone camera is bad. For example, the Pixel 5 and Galaxy S21 have approximately the same result, and Xiaomi 12 has not gone very far. But it is worth remembering that the Galaxy A54 costs about 500 euros.

The authors of the review note that there is instability in white balance and exposure, focus errors and delays in taking pictures in poor light.

Lenovo today in China introduced a lot of new products, including the most powerful of gaming laptops – Legion Y9000P Extreme Edition. The top model has only the highest performance components: a 24-core Core i9-13900HX and a GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop.

True, such a 3D accelerator is available only in the maximum configuration, for which, however, they ask for quite adequate $ 3,200. And the $2,615 base version uses a GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop.

Legion Y9000P Extreme Edition received a 16-inch screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels and a frame rate of 240 Hz. It provides 100% sRGB color space coverage as well as Dolby Vision technology. The maximum brightness is 500 cd/m2, the screen also meets the requirements of the DisplayHDR 400 standard.

The laptop received metal outer panels. The case thickness is 22-25.9 mm, the weight of the device is 2.7 kg.

The Legion Y9000P Extreme Edition received an improved cooling system, a backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet adapters, 32 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and an 80 Wh battery. Pre-sales in China will start on March 26.