Mastercard has finally pulled the trigger on a stablecoin acquisition. The payments giant on Tuesday morning announced a deal to acquire the London-based startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, with $300 million locked up in “contingent payments.”
The deal is expected to close by year end, Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief product officer, told Fortune. He declined to provide more details about the purchase of BVNK, which uses stablecoins to power customer transactions, cross-border payments, global treasuries, and other use cases.
The acquisition concludes an off-and-on negotiations process that saw the stablecoin firm court multiple buyers, including the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase and Mastercard. Coinbase came close to buying the startup for around $2 billion before the two called off the deal around November.
Mastercard’s yet-to-be-closed purchase of BVNK eclipses Stripe’s $1.1 billion deal for the startup Bridge in February 2025, making this the largest stablecoin acquisition yet for the crypto industry.
Read more: https://fortune.com/2026/03/17/mastercard-bvnk-acquisition-stablecoins-1-8-billion/
https://fortune.com/2026/03/17/mastercard-bvnk-acquisition-stablecoins-1-8-billion/
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tldr; Mastercard announced its acquisition of London-based crypto startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, marking the largest stablecoin deal to date. BVNK uses stablecoins for customer transactions, cross-border payments, and global treasuries. The deal, expected to close by year-end, follows failed negotiations with Coinbase and Zerohash. Mastercard aims to leverage stablecoin technology to expand into new markets, particularly remittances, while maintaining its core fiat-based business model.
*This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
Good time to buy in the dip.
– Santa Claus
All in now with savings
They know that they have to adapt to Crypto if they want to survive.
Once the same laughed ridiculed us.