Mastercard adds BVNK to hone its bank stablecoin pitch

• Key insight: Mastercard has closed on its $1.8 billion deal to acquire stablecoin technology firm BVNK. 
• What's at stake: Rival Visa is also developing technology to improve transaction processing for stablecoins, a key as stablecoins are expected to be used to improve a fragmented cross-border payments market. 
• Forward look: One of the projects that Mastercard and BVNK will work on is Open USD, a bank and payment company-dominated stablecoin that is expected to launch later this year. 

With mainstream bank support for stablecoins on the horizon, Mastercard has added a key piece to its goal to connect financial institutions, merchants and consumers to digital assets. 

The card network on Monday closed on an earlier $1.8 billion agreement to acquire digital asset technology firm BVNK, enabling Mastercard to enhance its ability to support payment processing, particularly for international transactions. 

"Digital currencies — particularly stablecoins — are increasingly addressing real-world needs in areas like cross-border B2B payments, remittances, payouts, settlement and treasury flows," said Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard, in a release on Monday. "In a multi-money world where fiat, stablecoins and tokenized deposits and other forms of value coexist, the next payments paradigm will be defined by how effectively each rail, network or form of money connects and works together. By combining Mastercard's global network with BVNK's on-chain infrastructure and stablecoin-native technology, we can deliver a more efficient, trusted and seamless payment experience."

Why BVNK?

BVNK, which was founded in 2021, specializes in technology that enables connections between traditional currency and digital currencies. Its technology supports blockchain networks in more than 130 countries.  

"We expect a world of multiplicity — many coins, many chains, and all of that needs a trusted interoperable layer because people will transact across different coins and so forth, and that is what BVNK will do for us," Michael Mieback, Mastercard's CEO, said during last week's earnings call.

BVNK works with clients such as PayPal and Circle to scale stablecoins and sell technology that underpins digital wallets, cross-border payments and merchant transactions, and transfers digital assets to traditional currency, according to the company. 

"This partnership matters far beyond BVNK and Mastercard. It signals a fundamental shift: stablecoins are no longer an experiment, they're becoming the base layer for how the world moves money," BVNK said in a statement on the Mastercard deal. "For decades, financial infrastructure has been fragmented. Cross-border payments take days. Settlement is expensive. Financial inclusion remains out of reach for billions. Stablecoins powered by trusted operators solve these problems at scale."

Visa, Mastercard's primary rival, is testing a stablecoin settlement system that enables issuers and merchant acquirers to settle with Visa in stablecoins. The Visa pilot, in partnership with Stripe stablecoin technology subsidiary Bridge, will determine how stablecoins can improve settlement, and how platforms such as Bridge can simplify the use of blockchains to process payments. 

"Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK brings together two highly complementary businesses. BVNK has built enterprise-grade stablecoin infrastructure, while Mastercard has one of the world's largest and most trusted payments networks," Kjartan Rist, a founding partner at Concentric, one of BVNK's seed investors, told American Banker. "That combination makes it significantly easier for financial institutions to adopt stablecoin capabilities into existing payment systems."

Where's the demand?

Stablecoins make up a miniscule portion of cross-border payments, suggesting either a lack of demand thus far or a huge untapped addressable market. Stablecoins totaled $135 billion out of $44 trillion in cross-border payments in 2025, or 0.31% percent, according to FCX Intelligence. There is some demand for digital asset processing among Visa and Mastercard's issuers. Forty-seven percent of banks said their institution's clients were asking for general information about cryptocurrency, while 35% said clients were asking for the ability to make payments using cryptocurrencies, according to research from American Banker. Another 27% of banks report customers are asking for institutionally provided custody of digital assets.

"Stablecoins aren't the answer to everything because you still need protections, you still need acceptance, and you still need to kind of find your way into fiat," Miebach said. 

Mastercard's BVNK deal is closing as the card network ramps up work on its support for stablecoins, with a goal of enabling payments for a range of coins. 

A group of banks and legacy payment companies, including BNY, Huntington Bank, Citizens Bank, U.S. Bank, American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase have backed Open USD, part of a new stablecoin venture called Open Standard. Open Standard will issue a dollar-backed stablecoin later this year. 

Adyen, Affirm, Klarna, Chime, Google, Capital One's Brex, Standard Chartered, Nuvei, Ramp, Marqeta, Shopify, and Remitly are also part of the endeavor. 

"We are working with USDC today, USDG, and so forth — choice has always been a key criteria and will be the same here in stablecoins," Miebach said, noting that the Open USD coin is an "important initiative. We're happy we're part of that from the beginning. We will engage with various other stablecoin consortia around the world to ensure choice and a balanced market."

Writing for American Banker, Darren Wang, founder of OwlTing, said Open USD will be challenged to build scale and interoperability for processing, in part due to its large number of participants. 

"Mastercard has flagged OpenUSD alongside a settlement-focused stablecoin approach," BofA analysts said in a research note, adding BVNK's closing and overall growth in foreign exchange should add to Mastercard's earnings for the full year.