Payments giant Mastercard will reportedly be acquiring crypto startup Zerohash in another move to position itself in the digital assets industry.
Mastercard will be paying between $1.5 billion and $2 billion for the stablecoin infrastructure firm, reports Fortune, citing five anonymous people involved with the deal.
[adinserter block="1"]The deal is not 100% confirmed and may fall through, but could end up being Mastercard’s biggest bet on stablecoins.
Earlier this week, stablecoin firm Circle said it had officially launched the testnet for its own chain, Arc, which is designed to serve as an economic operating system for the internet. Mastercard was one of over 100 companies from finance, tech and payments sectors that participated in the layer-1 launch.
Other companies included Visa, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Apollo and BNY Mellon.
In Mastercard’s August earnings call, CEO Ryan McInerney signaled that stablecoins were “additive” to its payments network – rather than a threat as many have suggested.
“And as to stablecoins, we see this as another currency. We also see it as additive to the network with opportunities for us to provide the on and off ramps from fiat to stablecoin to partner with [ advice ] and wallets to bring interoperability, bring relevant services, bring global reach and trust to the specific use cases. With new technologies, we always embrace innovation.”
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