Mastercard to buy BVNK
Mastercard agreed to acquire stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, signaling incumbents are buying on‑chain rails and programmable settlement capabilities. The deal underlines a push from traditional payments firms to own tokenized payment stacks across 130+ countries. (reuters.com)
The deal structure includes up to $300 million in performance‑contingent payments within a total consideration capped at $1.8 billion. (investor.mastercard.com) BVNK lists enterprise clients such as Worldpay, Deel and dLocal and says its platform combines licensing, custody and Tier‑1 bank partnerships to facilitate billions in enterprise transactions. (businesswire.com) The startup closed a Series B (roughly £40 million) in 2025 led by Haun Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others, and later attracted strategic investment from Citi Ventures as it pushed into the U.S. market. (businesscloud.co.uk) Negotiations between BVNK and Coinbase for an acquisition near $2 billion took place earlier in 2025 but did not close, according to reporting on the prior talks. (bloomberg.com) Mastercard’s announcement frames BVNK’s technology as an interoperability layer to connect fiat rails, stablecoins and tokenized deposits, and ties the acquisition to its broader Crypto Partner Program and tokenization efforts. (mastercard.com) BVNK’s founding team includes Jesse Hemson‑Struthers, Chris Harmse and Donald Jackson, and the company opened a San Francisco office as part of its U.S. expansion following 2025 fundraising. (crunchbase.com)
