From Abandoned Project to Sky-High Target, Mastercorp Acquires BVNK for $1.8 Billion
Original Title: "From Bargain to Sky-High Target, Mastercard Swallows $1.8 Billion BVNK"
Original Author: Sanqing, Foresight News
On March 17, global payment giant Mastercard announced the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK. The transaction consideration could go as high as $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payout. Mastercard expects to complete the deal by the end of this year, expanding its end-to-end support capabilities in the digital asset and cross-border value transfer space.

Image Source: Mastercard Tweet
The Value of a Bargain, Coinbase's Hesitation, and Mastercard's Resolve
BVNK was founded in 2021 and is based in London. In May 2022, BVNK completed a $40 million Series A funding round, valuing the company at $340 million post-money. Two years later, in December 2024, it secured another $50 million in a Series B round, reaching a valuation of around $750 million.
BVNK is led by three South African founders, including CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers (a serial entrepreneur who previously founded e-commerce and gaming companies acquired by Naspers and Sportradar, respectively), CTO Donald Jackson (a blockchain and enterprise systems expert), and CBO Chris Harmse (a CFA holder and former macro/crypto fund partner, focusing on forex and cross-border payments).
This startup has quietly woven a vast network for settling crypto assets.
Currently, the platform processes an annual stablecoin payment transaction volume of approximately $250-300 billion. It provides enterprises with a seamless channel to bridge fiat and stablecoin, supporting payment activities across 130+ countries and regions on various major blockchain networks.
But before Mastercard stepped in, the real prospective buyer for BVNK was actually crypto giant Coinbase.
In November 2025, acquisition talks between Coinbase and BVNK reached the deep end of due diligence, with a staggering $2 billion on the table, and the two even briefly signed an exclusivity agreement.
Coinbase was an investor in its Series B funding round, and if the deal had gone through, it would have been a landmark event for a crypto-native company's expansion into the core of global payment infrastructure. However, the two parties eventually announced the deal's cancellation that same month, without disclosing any substantial reason for the breakdown.
Stepping back, Coinbase, Mastercard promptly completed a precise fill-in.
For a startup with only about $40 million in annual revenue, the $18 billion price tag appeared highly expensive in financial terms. But this sky-high funding was never about current profit margins; it was about a monopoly-level ticket to the next-generation settlement network.
Defensive Counterstrike, Buying Out the "Bypass Card Networks" Option
Mastercard's move was actually a strategic counterstrike with a strong defensive hue.
Stablecoins are visibly eroding the market share of traditional cross-border settlement at an eye-opening pace. With 24/7 operation, low friction costs, and extremely fast clearing speeds, blockchain-based digital dollars are beginning to shine in B2B payments and cross-border remittances.
Within the global financial network, traditional credit card networks are indeed the payment channels most threatened by stablecoin disruption. If multinational corporations and business entities get used to peer-to-peer on-chain settlements, Mastercard's survival-dependent centralized fiat routing network faces the risk of complete marginalization.
If you can't beat them, boldly acquire them.
Mastercard's Chief Product Officer, Jorn Lambert, is unapologetic about this. In the acquisition announcement, he stated that most financial institutions and fintech companies are expected to offer digital currency services in the future.
Mastercard's strategy is crystal clear, vowing to seamlessly integrate BVNK's established stablecoin rails and compliance engine directly into its vast global fiat network. Stablecoins are no longer competitors to the card networks but have been forcibly incorporated as a highly complementary business subset of their underlying network.
The traditional giants are building towering walls with capital barriers that are hard to match.
Land Grabbing, There Are No New Players at Wall Street's Payment Table
This is by no means a solo act by Mastercard; the entire traditional finance track is frantically vying for entry into blockchain infrastructure.
Prior to this acquisition, BVNK had already assembled a luxurious capital lineup from Wall Street. In May 2025, Mastercard's arch-rival Visa made a strategic investment in BVNK through its venture arm, Visa Ventures.
In the following October, Citigroup's venture arm, Citi Ventures, also put real money on the line to enter the game. While Citigroup refused to disclose the specific investment amount and BVNK's valuation, the company stated in an interview that its valuation exceeded $750 million from the Series B round.
Even just two months before Mastercard's acquisition announcement, Visa made a high-profile declaration to integrate BVNK's stablecoin settlement capability into its core Visa Direct platform to support global digital wallet cross-border fund disbursement.
This is not only a technical hard stitch but also a tacit collusion of capital.
Looking across the entire payment industry, Silicon Valley's hotshot Stripe had previously spent $1.1 billion to acquire the stablecoin startup Bridge. And even before finalizing BVNK, Mastercard was rumored to be in high-stakes acquisition negotiations amounting to $15 billion to $20 billion with another crypto infrastructure startup, Zerohash (founded in 2017, headquartered in Chicago).
The traditional payment giants are reaggregating the originally decentralized and fragmented stablecoin liquidity through frantic and intensive mergers and acquisitions, bringing it back into their highly familiar business frameworks and regulatory channels.
In this extremely lucrative poker game, the ultimate players taking a seat are still those old rulers holding the heavy purse strings.
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