Mastercard Closes BVNK Acquisition as Visa Rolls Out Stablecoin Platform in $325 Billion Race

Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK in early August, the company confirmed, while Visa's new Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP) — launched July 16 — has already settled an annualized $7 billion in volume, the company said. The two moves are part of a broader land grab among the major card networks to control the plumbing of the $325 billion stablecoin market.

Mastercard + BVNK

The BVNK acquisition strengthens Mastercard's ability to connect digital assets and traditional payment rails, supporting intraday, weekend and holiday settlement on six regulated stablecoins across eight blockchains. "The acquisition strengthens the ability to connect digital assets and traditional payment rails, enabling secure, interoperable value exchange at scale," Mastercard said in an August press release. BVNK had been one of the few regulated stablecoin-banking partners in Europe, with existing licenses that would have taken Mastercard years to build independently. The deal's purchase price was not disclosed but is rumored to be in the $1.5 to $2 billion range.

Visa's Stablecoin Platform

Visa announced VSP on July 16 as a single environment for financial institutions, fintechs and crypto natives to mint, move and manage stablecoins through Visa rails. The platform now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs worldwide, with annualized settlement volume at roughly $7 billion as of March 2026. "We are not just a card network anymore; we are a multi-rail payments company," Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said at the Visa Payments Forum 2026.

The Big Banks Counter-Move

The card networks aren't working alone. On June 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are building a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeted for the first half of 2027. The move is widely seen as a defensive response to the stablecoin threat — particularly after JPMorgan struck a strategic partnership with Coinbase last year that lets Chase cardholders buy crypto and redeem Ultimate Rewards points for USDC. Stripe, meanwhile, dropped the month's biggest bombshell by acquiring OpenRouter for $7 billion, securing its own claim on the AI-payment intersection. The next 12 months will determine whether card networks, banks, or fintechs own the next-generation payment stack.