BVNK

BVNK is enterprise-grade stablecoin payments infrastructure that connects on-chain rails to traditional fiat settlement networks. Founded in October 2021, the company built a single API platform enabling businesses to send, receive, store, convert, spend, and earn across stablecoins and fiat currencies in 130+ countries. In August 2026, Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, making it one of the largest exits in crypto payments infrastructure history.

Background and Founding

BVNK was incorporated in 2021 by a team of five fintech veterans: CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers, Chief Product Officer George Davis, and co-founders Donald Jackson, Kyle Redelinghuys, and Chris Harmse. Hemson-Struthers is a serial entrepreneur whose prior ventures in e-commerce and gaming were acquired by Naspers and Sportradar respectively. He and Jackson had previously co-founded Coindirect, a Cape Town-based cross-border payments company launched in 2017, which merged into BVNK in January 2022, bringing with it an existing revenue base.

The company did not take external funding at launch. Its first raise was a $40 million Series A led by Tiger Global in May 2022. Total external funding reached $93.2 million across four rounds before the Mastercard acquisition.

What BVNK Does

BVNK targets mid-to-large enterprises that need to move money across borders at scale using stablecoins as the settlement layer while supporting fiat on- and off-ramps on either end. The minimum requirement for platform access is $500,000 in monthly payment volume and at least six months of operating history.

The platform organizes its capabilities into six primitives:

• Send — Global stablecoin and crypto payouts to individuals or businesses
• Receive — Accept stablecoin payments with configurable settlement in fiat or crypto
• Store — Unified accounts holding both fiat (USD, EUR, GBP) and stablecoin balances
• Convert — Real-time exchange between fiat and stablecoins at competitive rates
• Spend — Card issuance against stablecoin balances for corporate spending
• Earn — Yield on idle stablecoin or fiat balances

These primitives are offered under three deployment modes. Direct Payments covers payouts and payment acceptance for the business itself. Embedded Payments allows companies to integrate BVNK's stablecoin wallets and fiat accounts into their own product, white-labeling the infrastructure for their end customers. Self-Managed Payments serves trading desks, treasury teams, and cross-border payment orchestrators that need direct control over multi-leg settlement flows.

Target verticals include fintechs, marketplaces, global payroll providers, brokerages, digital asset platforms, and gaming companies. Established clients include Worldpay, Deel, Corpay, Circle, Rapyd, Flywire, Thunes, Bitso, LianLian Global, Equals Money, and IC Markets.

Supported Assets and Chains

BVNK routes stablecoin transactions across multiple blockchain networks through a single API surface. The supported asset matrix as of 2026 includes:

• USDC on Arbitrum, Base, Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana
• USDT on Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, and Tron
• PYUSD (PayPal USD) on Ethereum and Solana, available to US and Rest-of-World customers
• USDG (Global Dollar) on Solana
• EURC (Euro Coin) on Ethereum

BVNK ended USDT and PYUSD support for EEA-based customers in February 2026 under its reading of MiCA requirements, reflecting the regulatory complexity of operating a multi-jurisdiction stablecoin platform.

Solana is positioned within the platform as a primary settlement chain for payment use cases, particularly micropayments, given its low fees and fast finality. Solana transactions require 32 block confirmations before funds are considered settled. In January 2024, BVNK partnered with online trading broker Deriv to bring Solana-denominated payments to millions of traders, an early signal of Solana's role in the platform's payment routing logic.

Regulatory Licensing and Security

BVNK holds more than 40 regulatory licenses across its operating jurisdictions. Key authorizations include:

• UK: Electronic Money Institution license regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
• Malta: EMI license covering EU passporting
• Europe: Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) registrations across multiple member states
• United States: Money Transmitter Licenses in all 50 states

Security certifications include ISO 27001:2022, SOC 1 Type II, and SOC 2 Type II, all independently audited. The company guarantees 99.9% platform uptime and uses purpose-built proprietary technology rather than white-labeling third-party infrastructure.

Scale and Growth

By end of 2025 BVNK was processing $30 billion in annualized stablecoin payment volume representing 2.8 million transactions, a 2.3x increase year-over-year. The US market was a particularly sharp growth story — from effectively zero to $10 billion annualized volume in the 12 months following the January 2025 US payment rails launch. Latin American pay-in volume grew 22x over the same period; UK pay-in volume grew 19x. The company added 226 new enterprise customers during 2025.

Mastercard Acquisition

Mastercard announced a definitive agreement to acquire BVNK on March 17, 2026 for up to $1.8 billion, with $300 million of that amount contingent on performance milestones. The deal cleared regulatory approvals and closed on August 3, 2026 — roughly five months ahead of the late-2026 timeline that had been anticipated. Mastercard described the acquisition as central to its strategy of enabling interoperability across fiat and digital currencies.

BVNK continues to operate as an autonomous unit under CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers. Existing customer integrations, pricing, and team structures remain unchanged. Post-integration, BVNK customers are expected to gain access to Mastercard's global settlement infrastructure, expanded card issuance capabilities, and a larger pool of fiat off-ramp options.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

BVNK's relevance to the Solana ecosystem lies primarily in the payment layer. The platform exposes Solana as a settlement chain for three stablecoins — USDC, USDG, and PYUSD — through enterprise API integrations used by major fintechs and payment processors. Businesses that need to receive or disburse stablecoins on Solana at scale, but do not want to manage wallet infrastructure, regulatory compliance, or fiat conversion themselves, can route through BVNK. The Deriv partnership is the most visible public example: a regulated financial services provider with a global retail user base using BVNK's infrastructure to settle positions in USDC and other Solana-native stablecoins.

As Mastercard builds out its stablecoin interoperability layer, BVNK's Solana integration — already live and handling production volume — positions it as one of the more significant enterprise on-ramps connecting traditional payment networks to the Solana ecosystem.