BVNK

BVNK is an enterprise-grade stablecoin payments infrastructure platform that connects on-chain payment networks — including Solana — with traditional fiat rails such as ACH, SEPA, Fedwire, and Swift, enabling global businesses to move value near-instantly across borders.

Background

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in London, BVNK was built to address the friction in cross-border B2B payments by using stablecoins as the settlement layer. The company operates as a regulated financial institution rather than a typical fintech startup: it holds an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA Reference: 901057), EU EMI authorization, and is a registered Money Services Business (NMLS ID 2531294) in the United States with Money Transmitter Licenses across all 50 states. In total, BVNK holds more than 25 licenses and regulatory approvals globally.

The company attracted early backing from Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Tiger Global, and later added Visa Ventures and Citi Ventures as investors, reflecting its positioning at the intersection of institutional finance and crypto infrastructure.

Core Mechanism

BVNK operates as an infrastructure layer between businesses and the global payments network. Its core mechanism treats stablecoins as a settlement asset that can move instantly across blockchain networks and then convert seamlessly into local fiat currency at the endpoint. Rather than holding stablecoin risk on behalf of clients, BVNK routes value through the most efficient path — whether that is a domestic fiat rail like ACH or SEPA, or a blockchain like Solana or Ethereum.

The platform supports USDC, USDT, EURC, and PYUSD across eight blockchain networks. Solana features prominently among these because of its near-instant finality and low transaction costs, which align directly with BVNK's goal of making cross-border payments feel as fast as domestic transfers.

Products

Managed Payments is BVNK's primary offering for businesses that want to outsource the complexity of stablecoin operations. It includes virtual accounts denominated in EUR, GBP, and USD; outbound payment capabilities to contractors and partners globally; inbound stablecoin receipt with automatic conversion to fiat; and on/off-ramp services. Clients get stablecoin-linked wallets that connect directly to ACH, SEPA, Fedwire, and Swift.

Layer1 (Self-Managed Payments) is designed for larger businesses that want to deploy their own regulatory licenses, custodians, and liquidity partners while still running on BVNK's core infrastructure. This gives enterprises control over the customer relationship while abstracting away the underlying complexity of multi-chain settlement.

Embedded Wallets allow businesses to offer their end-customers the ability to send, receive, hold, and convert between fiat and stablecoins inside a branded product. This enables payment service providers, marketplaces, and fintech platforms to launch stablecoin capabilities without building underlying infrastructure from scratch.

Solana and Stablecoin Rails

Solana is a supported settlement chain within BVNK's multi-chain infrastructure. Solana's throughput and low latency make it particularly well-suited for the high-frequency, high-volume B2B payment flows that BVNK handles at enterprise scale.

In January 2026, BVNK announced a partnership with Visa Direct — Visa's real-time push payments network with more than 7 billion endpoints across 190 countries — to power its stablecoin infrastructure. The integration uses blockchains including Solana as settlement rails, bringing enterprise-scale stablecoin payments to Visa's global network of endpoints.

Scale and Growth

By end of 2025, BVNK was processing $30 billion in annualized stablecoin payment volume, a 2.3x increase year-over-year, across 2.8 million transactions. The company added 226 new customers during 2025. One third of its total volume originates from the United States, where BVNK launched in January 2025 at $0.1 billion annualized volume and reached $10 billion by year-end.

Notable clients include Worldpay, Deel, Flywire, Rapyd, Thunes, Bitso, dLocal, LianLian Global, Meow, and Corpay. The platform targets businesses processing at least $500,000 in monthly payments with a minimum of six months of operating history, and supports onboarding from 130+ countries.

Security and Compliance

BVNK holds ISO 27001:2022 certification and SOC 2 Type II certification, with the latter renewed in June 2026. The company maintains 100% segregation of customer electronic money funds with insolvency protection, a 99.9% platform uptime commitment, and multilayered anti-money laundering systems. Its regulatory footprint spans the UK (FCA EMI), the EU (EMI and VASP registrations including Spain and Malta), and all 50 US states.

Mastercard Acquisition

On March 17, 2026, Mastercard announced a definitive agreement to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments, in what was described at the time as the largest acquisition in the stablecoin sector. The deal, expected to close by end of 2026, would integrate BVNK's stablecoin infrastructure directly into Mastercard's global network. Mastercard's stated rationale was to connect on-chain payment flows with its existing fiat rails — and Solana is part of Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program alongside more than 100 other firms.

The acquisition capped a rapid growth arc for a company that went from founding in 2021 to a near-$2 billion exit valuation in five years, built on the compliance and licensing infrastructure required to handle enterprise payment volume at scale across regulated markets on both sides of the Atlantic.