Mastercard announced that it will buy BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, for up to $1.8 billion. The agreement comes four months after the end of negotiations between BVNK and Coinbase, which discussed a sale of around US$2 billion.
The amount includes US$300 million in payments conditional on targets, according to a statement released by the companies this Tuesday (17). They did not say whether the payment will be made in cash, shares or a combination of the two.
Payment giants like Mastercard and Visa have been moving to remain relevant as new financial technologies gain ground.
Headquartered in Purchase, New York, Mastercard launched a global network of partnerships with more than 85 crypto and digital asset companies earlier this month to integrate the traditional financial system with new forms of payment. According to the company, payments with digital currencies moved at least US$350 billion in volume last year.
In the sector, there are those who argue that the future lies in traditional payment methods; others are betting on solutions based on stablecoins, said Jorn Lambert, product director at Mastercard, in an interview.
“The value is in being able to connect the two, and making that connection requires multiple intermediaries,” he said. “It’s a very technical and sophisticated technology. Time to market makes a difference, and we understand that, if we were to develop everything from scratch, it would take a long time.”
Continues after advertising
Although Mastercard wants to gain space in the stablecoins market, the idea is not to change card payments already used on a daily basis by consumers, which, according to Lambert, work well, especially in the United States.
The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase confirmed, at the end of last year, that it was considering buying BVNK, based in London, but the conversations ended in November. BVNK co-founder and chief executive Jesse Hemson-Struthers declined to comment on what he called “pure speculation” about previous negotiations.
Founded in 2021, BVNK acts as a kind of “bridge” for entry into blockchain networks in more than 130 countries.
Continues after advertising
“It’s an infrastructure that takes many years to build, as does all the compliance that supports it,” said Hemson-Struthers. “From there, we were able to enable multiple use cases for sending, receiving and converting stablecoins, which we can now offer at scale.”
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
