The deal will include $300 million in contingent payments.

Payments giant Mastercard continues with its pro-crypto endeavors, announcing a major acquisition of the stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for $1.8 billion.

The move followed another major expansion from last week, when Mastercard tapped Ripple, Binance, PayPal, Circle, and other crypto companies in an attempt to bridge the gap between traditional finance and blockchain.

Mastercard’s Big Acquisition

The definitive agreement for $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments, will expand Mastercard’s end-to-end support of digital assets and value movement across currencies, rails, and regions, reads the statement.

According to the payments behemoth, the focus of the acquisition will be on real-world use cases such as cross-border remittances, business-to-business transactions, and global payouts, where stablecoins are increasingly seen as faster and more efficient alternatives.

The company emphasized that the key challenge remains integrating crypto-native systems into existing financial infrastructures, despite their evident growth over the past several years. It plans to use its global payment network, which spans over 200 countries, with BVNK’s blockchain capabilities, to deliver “secure, compliant, and scalable payment solutions.”

“We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will, in time, provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits. We want to support them and their customers with a best-in-class, highly compliant, interoperable offering that brings the benefits of tokenized money to the real world,” commented Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer, Mastercard.

He added that this acquisition reinforces what the company has been striving for – using innovation and technology to power economies and empower people. The network’s speed and programmability for every type of transaction are expected to increase with the addition of on-chain rails.

BVNK CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers described the deal as a major milestone for the entire industry as it would help “define and deliver the future of money” by combining complementary technologies and expertise.

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Crypto Adoption on the Rise

Mastercard’s statement explained that the new acquisition aligns with its broader push into the digital asset space, following last week’s announcement about the creation of the Crypto Partner Program. As reported, the company tapped industry giants such as Binance, Gemini, Paxos, Circle, and Ripple, alongside crypto-native and fintech behemoth PayPal, to connect blockchain with its vast global payments infrastructure.

The combined project is expected to offer a “chain-agnostic and asset-agnostic infrastructure” that will allow clients to operate across different blockchain networks without being locked into a single ecosystem.