Pourquoi Mastercard mise gros sur les paiements en stablecoins

Transferring money from point A to point B has been the foundation of banking, from the early activity of the Templar Knights and Florentine traders to modern banks transferring money electronically. The most important parts of this service have stayed unchanged: secure and quick transfer, as low fees as possible, and easy ways to get money in and out of the system.

This is a service that has long been monopolized by the big financial institutions and their partners, like credit card companies, especially for digital and international money transfers. As a result, performance has somewhat stagnated since the early effort of digitalization, with money transfer in traditional financial institutions taking at best several hours, or often several days.

This was true until cryptocurrencies arrived and provided an entirely new way to validate transfers in mere minutes, using blockchain technology and ultra-secure methods. For many years, this was a niche but a growing grey area, with national regulators struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation and decide how to treat cryptos.

This has changed in the past few years, with cryptos now gaining mainstream recognition, and many more financial instruments allowing the use of cryptos, like Bitcoin ETFs, for example.

The same can be said for payment and the emergence of stablecoins, cryptos that replicate 1-to-1 the value of a given fiat currency (usually the US dollar), allowing for seamless payment of dollar-denominated goods through blockchain payment systems.

This represents a major threat to payment network companies, which have comfortably sat as necessary middlemen for all consumer digital transactions, collecting lucrative fees for decades.

This explains the recent move by Mastercard to acquire the UK-based stablecoin startup BVNK for $1.8B, making it a massive move by the payment network and credit card company into cryptos, in a bid to avoid being disintermediated.

“Both of the largest payment networks – Mastercard and Visa – now view stablecoins as core financial infrastructure,”

Ryan Bozarth – Founder of Dakota.

How Do Stablecoin Payments Work?

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies backed in a 1:1 ratio by a “regular” fiat currency, generally USD. They bridge traditional finance and digital assets, offering the speed of blockchain technology without the high volatility of cryptocurrency assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Popular examples of stablecoins are Tether (USDT), Pièce en USD (USDC), et Par (DAI).

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In theory, anyone can use stablecoins directly to leverage blockchain and stablecoins for money transfers. In practice, this is a tricky thing to do for many companies, especially as this can run into complex regulatory issues, like money laundering rules, Know-Your-Customer (KYC) regulations, risks of exposure to cryptomarkets, cybersecurity, etc.

This is why stablecoin payment services emerged, providing the extra layers of convenience and safety on top of the stablecoins and blockchain technology, speeding up adoption.

BVNK Stablecoin Infrastructure Explained

BVNK Overview

BVNK is a B2B payments infrastructure company built to provide the stablecoin’s advantages to other companies, while solving any potential issues. By leveraging stablecoin tech, it can deliver near-instant, low-cost, and 24/7 global transaction capabilities, a capacity unmatched by normal payment networks and banking systems.

It was founded in 2021, with early funding from venture capital firms Kingsway Capital and Tiger Global, and talent from experts with backgrounds in foreign currency exchange, fintech, and compliance, previously working at companies like Revolut and Visa.

It quickly grew to an annualized payment volume of $10B in December 2024, over $20B by October 2025, and $30B by the end of 2025, after its official launch in the U.S. market in January 2025. It also received strategic investments by Visa Ventures and Citi Ventures.

BVNK’s client list includes a wide range of different company profiles, from payment service providers (PSPs) and digital-only banks to large enterprises.

It is not targeting smaller companies and is only looking to work with clients interested in processing at least €500,000 in payments a month, with a minimum of 6 months of trading/operating history.

BVNK’s Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure and Pricing Model

A key selling point of BVNK is that it is already regulated to the standard of a regular payment processor, for example holding an EMI license (Electronic Money Institution) in the UK/EU and VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) registration in Spain and a total of 25+ licenses and regulatory approval, and is able to provide its service in all 50 US states, either directly or through parnerships.

BVNK’s platform provides a fully AML (anti-money laundering) compliant service, with enterprise-grade uptime (99.9%), as proven by independent auditing.

Source: bvnk

BVNK provides wallet services for the custody of crypto-assets at no cost and provides transfers of crypto-assets from one BVNK wallet to another BVNK wallet also free of charge.

When BNVK’s customers buy, sell, or convert crypto-assets, they pay fees for the “Conversion All-in Exchange Rate”. This rate is influenced by two components:

• BVNK Rate: a stable, blended rate from global and regional exchanges, market makers, and OTC desks.
• Commercial Fee: a pre-agreed percentage and/or fixed amount added to the BVNK Rate, negotiated directly with the customer during onboarding.

So while it might not be very clear what the fees actually are, the quick success of the barely 5-year-old company is likely driven by not just the service quality, but a very competitive pricing structure as well, at least compared to legacy providers.

“For all of the advancements made in simplifying the digital currency opportunity, we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. Together, we’re able to deliver an unprecedented infrastructure for digital currency-based financial services.”

Jesse Hemson-Struthers – Co-Founder and CEO of BVNK

BVNK Acquired By Mastercard

It is this quick growth and strong competitive position that made BVNK attractive for an acquisition by larger firms.

Initially, analysts expected BVNK to be acquired by Coinbase for a deal worth up to $2B. It is unclear why the deal fell through, but possible explanations have been a too-expensive price tag, overlapping with Coinbase’s own stablecoin payments platform for businesses, and potential risks linked to the interest and presence in BVNK’s capital of Visa and Mastercard.

En conséquence, BVNK ended up being acquired for “only” $1.8B by Mastercard.

“We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will in time provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits. Adding on-chain rails to our network will support speed and programmability for virtually every type of transaction.”

Jorn Lambert – Chief Product Officer, Mastercard

This comes in the context of a similar acquisition of the stablecoin startup Bridge by Stripe for $1.1B in February 2025, illustrating the increasing merging of stablecoin payment systems into other, more established payment providers.

It also comes after the January 2026 announcement that Zerohash, a rival of BVNK, decided to stay independent after negotiating with Mastercard a potential $1.5B-$2B acquisition.

“The deal connects onchain payment rails with Mastercard’s existing network. The firm said the acquisition demonstrates that stablecoins can serve as a complementary infrastructure layer rather than a direct competitor to card networks.”

TD Cowen analysts

Mastercard’s Strategy for Stablecoins and Crypto Payments

The acquisition of BVNK is just one more step for the credit card company in the integration of crypto into its payment ecosystem. For example, Mastercard was already running a pilot of Multi Token Network (MTN) in 2023.

In this vision, crypto does not bypass traditional payment providers, but simply becomes a way to improve how money moves behind the scenes.

Source: MasterCard

The acquisition of BVNK put MasterCard in a solid position to become the partner of choice in providing stablecoin-related services, merging BVNK technology with MasterCard’s massive network of preexisting relationships in the payment network world.

This could also help the company grow its business in emerging markets with limited dollar liquidity.

Mastercard has also cultivated a wide panel of crypto-related partners for B2C crypto payments, faithful to its historical role of a central middleman provider and wary of being replaced by blockchain technology if customers moved to lower-fees alternatives.

It already provides crypto-enabled cards, letting consumers use their crypto balances across 150 million+ locations accepting Mastercard payment, including with a credit line based on their crypto holdings without selling them, and the possibility to earn rewards in crypto.

Source: MasterCard

Financially, the acquisition is not expected to have a significant near-term impact, as BVNK generated about $40 million in revenue in 2025. So it will not directly change Mastercard’s earnings, but it will provide it with a key technical capability it was at risk of missing.

Investing In Mastercard

Mastercard has been a very stable company and investment, with the company roughly growing alongside the global economy and riding the trend of digitalization of payment for further gains. Together with Visa, the two central credit card and payment network firms have long been a de facto lucrative monopoly.

The emergence of cryptocurrencies could have been a serious threat to both companies, as cryptos promise lower fees and quicker payments than were ever possible before with traditional banking solutions.

However, the last few years have shown that despite growing adoption, directly pricing goods in Bitcoin and using cryptocurrencies for everyday payment is not really happening at scale with the general public. Technical complexity and digital currencies’ price volatility have hindered widespread adoption for everyday payments.

This is where stablecoins provide an alternative, creating a simpler “dollar-like” form of crypto that is easier to understand and adopt for the general public.

With the BVNK acquisition, Mastercard is moving one step closer to turning stablecoins into the basis of the financial world and payment systems, as the company’s reputation and connections will greatly facilitate the growth of blockchain technology with many enterprise accounts.

And for B2C transactions, Mastercard can make all of blockchain’s advantages available seamlessly (quick payments, lower fees, etc.) to its existing pool of 1.1 milliard credit card users, including 725 million cards outside the United States, without any changes.

So a few years ago, Mastercard was at risk of being considered a relic of a bygone era where payments had to pass through a few monopoly actors gouging fees from their customers.

But today, with crypto-enabled credit cards, a B2B stablecoin payment system, and, overall, the merging of blockchain and crypto with mainstream financial institutions, this risk seems largely mitigated. And a $1.8B acquisition might sound large, but it is not that large for a company with $451B, leaving room for Mastercard to do it again if a new blockchain-related technology emerges that could threaten its position.

However, investors should be wary that even if cryptos do not ultimately hurt Mastercard’s competitive position much, they might force the company to accept lower fees, durably reducing its profitability and margins, as keeping its previous fee levels would leave it open to attacks by cheaper, more efficient new crypto competitors.

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