BVNK’s $1.8B Mastercard buyout: inside the deal race

Mastercard (MA) completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK earlier this week. The deal process involved Coinbase and Visa, and the inside version comes from Concentric, the venture firm that backed BVNK in 2019 at a $4 million valuation.

Kjartan Rist, founding partner at Concentric, said he was introduced to BVNK in 2018 by a chief executive his firm had already backed. “They came to us highly recommended by an alumni CEO that we had already backed,” Rist told CoinDesk. “There was a lot of trust there, and this CEO said, ‘You got to meet these guys.’ They were serial entrepreneurs coming out of South Africa. They were hungry. They were relentless.”

Rist said the exit brought mixed feelings. “It’s actually sad to sign the papers, almost like sending your son off to boarding school,” he said.

Chris Harmse, BVNK’s co-founder and chief business officer, said by email: “It’s been an incredible journey. Concentric has been a valued partner throughout that journey.”

Stablecoins are one of the busiest corners of crypto, with total market capitalization around $300 billion, according to CoinGecko. Stripe bought Bridge, another stablecoin infrastructure firm, for $1.1 billion in late 2024. “Mastercard has the deepest respect for Stripe,” Rist said. “I think that’s another way of saying that they’re looking over their shoulder.”

Mastercard has also been testing single-audit stablecoin compliance with Borderless.xyz. On AlphaScala’s stock page, Mastercard has an Alpha Score of 64 out of 100, labeled Moderate.

US-listed crypto exchange Coinbase was reported at one point to have the upper hand, with a potential offer as high as $2.5 billion. The founders emphasized culture and chemistry, Rist said. Coinbase’s number was probably bigger, he said. The chemistry, he said, was not there.

Rist put the split down to Coinbase being an exchange and Mastercard being a financial services company. “Mastercard was part of the first discussions and BVNK were quite clear when they got into discussions with Mastercard that there was a meeting of minds,” he said. The founders chose to try Coinbase first. “Mastercard stood outside on the porch waiting for them when that didn’t work out,” Rist said. “So it’s been a painless process, to be honest.”

Visa also came close. “All the usual suspects were involved, and Visa had an advantage because they were an investor. They made some money out of BVNK and they actually had an observer position on the board,” Rist said. Visa decided not to pursue an acquisition. “I think they are adopting a slightly different strategy when it comes to stablecoins. Rather than owning an operator, they will partner with multiple operators and partner also with Stripe, etcetera,” he said.

CoinDesk reported that Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase have backed a separate stablecoin platform that has since gone live.

Rist pointed to treasury operations as one application. “One large payments company working with BVNK rolls its treasury every 24 hours, and now they’re using stablecoins to roll it,” he said.

Another use case is paying distributed workers in high-inflation countries. “These firms are using dollar-nominated stablecoins so workers can choose to keep them in their wallets and don’t have to receive pesos or naira, for example,” Rist said.

Concentric is looking for its next stablecoin company. Rist said hundreds of companies claim to be the next big stablecoin firm, and only about 10% are full stack and institutionally verified enough to become winners. “The other 90% of them are just a front end and some APIs, so it’s our job to figure out who the real guys are.”