Mastercard just super-charged Wall Street’s crypto land grab with $1.8bn BVNK acquisition

Mastercard is the latest payments giant to bet heavily on crypto.

The $451 billion company added stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK to its portfolio just as traditional financial players ramp up their adoption of blockchain technology.

Market watchers say the move is part of a bigger financial industry land grab where Wall Street giants are vying for dominance.

“Everyone wants the orchestrators,” Wyatt Lonergan, general partner at VanEck Ventures, told DL News. “Why? Because moving between the fiat and stablecoin layer is where the complexity [is], and complexity is where they can extract margin.

“The goal is to build distribution and whoever does that can likely begin to eat at other layers of the stack to further increase margin and increase loyalty — think wallets, stablecoin issuance, maybe even their own chain.”

Mastercard’s move comes on the back of high-profile acquisitions and initiatives from rival firms.

Stripe, the $159 billion fintech, is a key example. Over the past two years, it has not only bought businesses like stablecoin venture Bridge, but has also backed the creation of its own blockchain, Tempo, which debuted this week.

Wall Street’s adoption of blockchain rails saw the total value of crypto M&As surge more than sevenfold in 2025 to reach $37 billion, according to Architect Partner’s data. Yet 2026 will easily outpace that number thanks to institutions buying other businesses rather than developing in-house, analysts said at the beginning of the year.

The race for blockchain dominance is on and Lonergan “wouldn’t be surprised” if more acquisitions are announced soon by leading financial firms.

Mastercard did not answer questions about further acquisitions.

Mastercard’s crypto play

Mastercard has explored blockchain technology for years. In 2016, it started to develop a set of blockchain APIs in a bid to stoke interest among banks and merchant developers.

While Mastercard and many other financial services firms went a bit quiet about their blockchain efforts during the Biden Administration’s years-long crypto crackdown, they seem emboldened by the pro-digital asset policies championed by US President Donald Trump.

Now, investment giants like BlackRock and banks like Morgan Stanley have announced initiatives to tap into digital ledger technologies. Big banks like Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup are actively recruiting for crypto talent.

Mastercard’s acquisition of BVNK is part of this wave. The deal will enable the payments giant to tap into BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure.

“Stablecoins and tokenised deposits have potential where cards may not be as fit for purpose, in areas like cross border payments, payouts, B2B payments, settlement and liquidity management,” a Mastercard spokesperson told DL News.

The BVNK deal comes on the back of Mastercard launching a partnership programme earlier in March. The scheme already includes over 100 companies to “shape the future” of finance, as Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital asset blockchain products partnerships, said in a statement.

The partners span both traditional financial players like PayPal as well as crypto native firms like Ripple, Circle, Ava Labs, and Kraken.

Top crypto networks like Solana, Arbitrum, and Aptos were also included in the mix.

“Participation isn’t about endorsing a specific protocol or asset,” a Mastercard spokesperson said when asked about the wide-ranging choice of companies and protocols.

“Instead, we’re focused on where partners are solving concrete problems for consumers, businesses and financial institutions today, and where we can help connect those solutions to trusted payment rails at scale.”

Everyone wants a stablecoin

Mastercard’s acquisition comes as other traditional finance players frantically rush into the stablecoin space.

Since Trump signed the Genius Act, a landmark stablecoin bill, into law last year, banks and other entities can issue the tokens if they are backed by assets like US Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves.

And with a $316 billion market value, according to DeFiLlama data, everyone wants a piece of the action.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street titan JP Morgan Chase, has praised stablecoins. The bank already has a cash-backed cryptocurrency, JPM Coin, which runs on Coinbase’s layer 2 network, Base.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are in talks to issue a stablecoin.

And 11 European banks have already joined forces to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin — expected to be released this year.

The issue is infrastructure: blockchain rails may be foreign to a number of traditional financial players — hence the amount of research and investment going into the space.

“Mastercard’s core strategic problem is that stablecoin rails are becoming a legitimate alternative settlement layer but until the BVNK deal — they didn’t own any of it,” added Lonergan.

“BVNK now gives them infrastructure built over the last seven years that they couldn’t build faster internally.”

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Eric Johansson is DL News’ managing editor. Got a tip? Email them at mdisalvo@dlnews.comand eric@dlnews.com.