New York-based Mastercard, a digital payments company, recently signed an agreement to acquire California-based BVNK, a stablecoin-powered financial stack for enterprises, for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments.
The purchase allows Mastercard to expand its end-to-end support of digital assets and value movement across currencies, rails and regions. It also adds to Mastercard’s recent commitments to foster more collaboration and innovation that maximizes opportunity in the next phase of on-chain payments.
“We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will in time provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits,” Jorn Lambert, Mastercard chief product officer, said. “We want to support them and their customers with a best in class, highly compliant, interoperable offering that brings the benefits of tokenized money to the real world. This acquisition reinforces what we have always done, using innovation and technology to power economies and empower people. Adding on-chain rails to our network will support speed and programmability for virtually every type of transaction.”
BVNK’s platform enables the sending and receiving of payments for customers on all major blockchain networks in more than 130 countries. The combined company will have the ability to deliver a digital asset- and chain-agnostic approach that allow customers to access the solutions that best suited to their needs.
“For all of the advancements made in simplifying the digital currency opportunity, we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible,” Jesse Hemson-Struthers, BVNK co-founder and CEO, said. “This deal brings together complementary capabilities to define and deliver the future of money. Together, we’re able to deliver an unprecedented infrastructure for digital currency-based financial services.”
Last year, digital currency payment use cases reached at least $350 billion in volume, according to Boston Consulting Group.
Mastercard is investing to ensure digital currencies payment options are integrated into its network in a way that ensures accessibility, interoperability and trust. The company says combining its capabilities with BVNK’s will allow it to deliver trusted interoperability at a scale that can seamlessly connect across systems.
The transaction is expected to close by 2027, subject to regulatory review and other customary closing conditions.