From ‘killer use case’ to ‘WhatsApp moment,’ there is no shortage of language to describe stablecoins’ underlying promise: a serious disruptive threat to the $2.5 trillion global payments industry.1
The wave of M&A activity since late 2024 signals both the promise and the seriousness of stablecoins’ challenge to traditional payments. Traditional payment companies have moved aggressively: Stripe declared “Crypto is Back” in April 2024 and followed with its largest-ever acquisition—Bridge for $1.1 billion—to establish dominance in stablecoin infrastructure. The card networks Visa and Mastercard have made strategic investments and pursued acquisitions to integrate stablecoin capabilities into their global networks. Meanwhile, crypto-native firms like Ripple and Coinbase have pursued over $5 billion in acquisitions to build vertically integrated stacks that compete directly with traditional payment rails.
The focus has been on controlling the infrastructure layers, or more simply put, the rails that move and manage stablecoins, rather than stablecoin issuers themselves. This is partly because the issuance layer is already controlled by a few established players such as Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) (with USDT and USDC commanding over 90% of the market), and partly because infrastructure control—not token issuance—becomes the sustainable source of competitive advantage when interoperability makes issuer value uncertain.
These two groups are pursuing fundamentally different strategies. Incumbents are acquiring stablecoin capabilities to expand their product offerings and defend existing positions, treating stablecoins as an extension to traditional payment infrastructure. Crypto native players, by contract, are building integrated stacks with the ambition of overhauling payments infrastructure entirely, by attempting to pull all payment activity onto stablecoin rails where they still connect to traditional finance rails.
The Drivers Behind Stablecoin M&A
Stablecoins are already operating at scale:
- In October 2025, the total stablecoin market capitalization reached $289 billion, up 66% year-over-year.2
- As of October 2025, stablecoin trading volume had reached $7.2 trillion, now more than half of Visa’s total 2024 payments volume of $13.2 trillion.3
- Standard Chartered projects stablecoin usage in foreign exchange flows could reach 10% from today’s 1%, driven by the need for more cost-efficient cross-border transactions.4
While the majority of stablecoin volume has historically been driven by crypto trading, real-world payment adoption is accelerating. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison pointed to stablecoins as “room-temperature superconductors for financial services,” with use cases expanding to cross-border remittances, B2B settlement, and treasury operations, particularly in markets with volatile currencies.5
Stablecoins are also fundamentally attractive to businesses. For merchants, stablecoin settlement is faster (seconds versus days) and cheaper, reducing payment processing costs. For issuers, they represent a high-margin product: Tether, already one of the largest non-government holders of US Treasuries, generated more than $13 billion in profit in 2024 with just ~150 employees, translating to roughly $93 million per employee.6 Issuers generate revenue by earning interest on the reserves backing the stablecoins—as of 30 September 2025 Tether held $181 billion in reserves, with approximately 62% in US Treasury bills.7
Payment processors benefit as well: they can internalize many of their payment processing costs. According to A16Z Crypto analysis “When payment processors handle a transaction, most of their fee is passed through to payment networks. So, when Stripe handles an online retail checkout flow, they take 2.9% of the total transaction and a $0.30 fee, but they give Visa and the issuing bank more than 70% of that fee.” With stablecoin transactions, there is no network gatekeeper to pay; Stripe announced a 1.5% fee for stablecoin payments, a 30% discount from its own card payment pricing, but the revenue they retain is much higher– margin since they aren’t paying interchange fees to card networks.8
Beyond these financial benefits, stablecoins enable a crucial AI-unlock. Being digitally native makes stablecoins programmable—they can be moved, split, or settled automatically based on pre-set conditions without manual intervention. With the rise of agentic AI in finance, stablecoins solve a fundamental problem: how an AI agent makes payments and who authorizes the transaction. Stablecoins allow AI agents to hold their own wallets and execute payments autonomously across vendors based on pre-defined rules, enabling true machine-to-machine commerce without human intervention. This is particularly valuable for micropayments, where traditional payment rails charging $0.30 plus a percentage make small transactions economically unviable. Stablecoins can process payments of pennies or fractions of a cent, unlocking usage-based billing at scale.
Regulatory clarity has been key for the current M&A wave. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, formalized what “safe” stablecoins must look like. Issuers are now required to hold high-quality liquid assets, including cash and US Treasury bills, with regular third-party audits. The GENIUS Act places issuers under the same supervisory regime as national and state-chartered banks, addressing long-standing concerns around reserve quality, redemption risk, and consumer protection.9
Crypto-Native Players Are Building Integrated Stacks
Circle, the largest US-based issuer of a stablecoin (USDC) second only to Tether, had a spectacular IPO in June 2025 that generated significant headlines—raising approximately $1 billion at a $31 share price but closing its first day at $83.23, valuing the business at $21.6 billion and representing a 168% first-day pop. The stock continued surging in subsequent weeks, eventually reaching a market caps exceeding $40 billion.10
While Stablecoin issuance remains a hot topic, the M&A race has focused on the infrastructure layer – where Stablecoins move across accounts. For the crypto-native players the core thesis is building the crypto ecosystem, acquiring companies in the traditional finance system only to capture distribution or to get access to relationships that can be used to drive traffic towards their own ecosystems.
Ripple has been the most aggressive player, completing three major acquisitions in 2025 totalling over $3.3 billion. The company acquired Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, a prime broker providing institutional clearing and custody services with $3 trillion in annual transaction volume. This was followed by Rail for $200 million, a B2B stablecoin payment provider that processes over 10% of global B2B stablecoin volume across multiple currencies. The last acquisition was GTreasury for $1 billion, a treasury management system serving over 1,000 companies, including Fortune 500 companies, across 160 countries.11
Together, these create an end-to-end enterprise stack for Ripple. Hidden Road provides institutional liquidity and custody, Rail enables cross-border stablecoin payments without businesses needing to hold crypto on their balance sheets, and GTreasury provides direct integration into Fortune 500 treasury operations. Teucrium CEO Sal Gilbertie described Ripple’s strategy as “literally building a JPMorgan rival”—a fully integrated financial institution built on stablecoin rails rather than traditional banking infrastructure.
Coinbase has pursued a different strategy, focusing on acquiring crypto-native assets to complete its offering. The company acquired Deribit in August 2025, a leading crypto options exchange, for $4.3 billion—Deribit later launched USDC-settled options that allow institutional traders to use stablecoins as collateral.12 The company’s most strategic asset may be Base, a L2 blockchain built on top of Ethereum that Coinbase created and operates. In November 2025, JPMorgan launched its JPMD deposit token on Base, marking significant validation from a major traditional bank for the blockchain.13
Coinbase also entered exclusivity to acquire BVNK in October 2025 at a reported $2 billion valuation but walked away from the deal the next month. BVNK processes $20 billion in annual stablecoin payment volume for enterprise clients. The acquisition would have aligned directly with Coinbase’s stablecoin payment ambitions—earlier in 2025, BVNK had partnered with Shopify to offer merchants transaction settlement through USDC. BVNK remains available, with Mastercard previously expressing interest and Visa having invested in the company in May 2025.14
MoonPay has focused on smaller, strategic acquisitions to build enterprise capabilities. The company acquired Helio for $175 million and Iron (undisclosed value), rebranding Helio as MoonPay Commerce to enable crypto-powered checkouts for merchants.15 CEO Ivan Soto-Wright called the Iron acquisition “…our Braintree moment. Iron’s technology positions MoonPay to become the definitive infrastructure provider for enterprise stablecoin solutions”—referencing PayPal’s transformational $800 million acquisition of Braintree in 2013 that positioned PayPal as developer infrastructure and included Venmo, which became crucial for competing in peer-to-peer payments for Paypal.16
Incumbents are Joining the Race
Traditional finance players have also moved aggressively into stablecoins, seeking to expand their presence in the rapidly growing digital payments ecosystem using both partnerships and M&A.
Stripe has made the most decisive moves. After stopping support of Bitcoin payments in 2018, Stripe made its largest acquisition ever—Bridge for $1.1 billion in October 2024. Bridge provides API-based stablecoin payment infrastructure that allows businesses to integrate stablecoin payments without managing blockchain complexity.4
Three months after closing Bridge in February 2025, Stripe launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts in May 2025, allowing businesses in 101 countries to hold stablecoin balances, receive funds on both crypto and fiat rails, and send stablecoins globally. Stripe also acquired Privy in June 2025, a crypto wallet infrastructure developer powering over 75 million accounts. Together, these acquisitions create an end-to-end stack: Bridge handles stablecoin payments, Privy manages wallet infrastructure, and both integrate with Stripe’s $1.4 trillion annual payment volume.
Mastercard is taking a more integrated approach. The company is in late-stage acquisition talks with Zerohash at a valuation of $1.5-2 billion. Zerohash provides the infrastructure that enables traditional financial institutions to offer crypto services—its customers include Morgan Stanley, SoFi, and Interactive Brokers. Mastercard also competed for BVNK before losing to Coinbase and now has a second chance with Coinbase’s withdrawal.17
Stablecoin M&A will continue at pace
Despite the M&A momentum, significant questions remain. The most fundamental one is whether stablecoins can offer the same consumer protections as traditional payment systems—credit card networks provide fraud protection, chargebacks, and dispute resolution built into their cost structure. Once compliance, insurance, and consumer protection requirements are layered onto stablecoin infrastructure, the cost advantages may narrow substantially.
Regulatory uncertainty persists beyond the GENIUS Act, particularly around cross-border payments and anti-money laundering enforcement. There are also geopolitical implications: dollar-denominated stablecoins effectively extend US monetary policy globally, with Tether’s treasury holdings making it the seventh-largest USD holder worldwide. This creates dependencies that could become flashpoints as countries seek monetary sovereignty, particularly if stablecoins facilitate capital flight.
These risks have not slowed the consolidation, however. As stablecoin adoption spreads, the thesis underlying stablecoins will become stronger and naturally resolve some inhibitors—such as fiat-to-stablecoin liquidity—making the promise of reshaping the $2.5 trillion (revenue) global payments industry more tangible.
In markets undergoing fundamental transformation, strategic M&A has often signalled early positioning for first-mover advantage. In 2025, many financial institutions put stablecoins on their agendas; we expect them to pursue these agendas aggressively in 2026. If M&A activity follows growth and BVNK and Zerohash are still in the market—we can expect the $9 billion deployed in 2025 to grow by 50% or more in 2026, making it potentially one of the fastest-growing M&A segments in the rapidly evolving world of fintech.
Ali Al-Suhail, CFA is Vice President at Artis Partners, where he advises growth-stage technology companies on strategic M&A and financings. Over his career, he has advised on more than $3 billion in transaction value across fintech, technology, and other sectors in EMEA and the US. Prior to Artis, Ali was Vice President at DAI Magister and part of EY’s lead advisory team in Dubai. He holds an MBA from London Business School and is a CFA charterholder.
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References
[1] Global Payments Report — McKinsey & Company
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/global-payments-report
[2] How Stablecoins Reached a $300 Billion Market Cap in 2025 — Arkham Intelligence
https://info.arkm.com/research/how-stablecoins-reached-a-300-billion-market-cap-in-2025
[3] ACI Worldwide Acquires Payment Components — Connecting the Dots in Payments
https://www.connectingthedotsinpayments.com/aci-worldwide-acquires-european-fintech-payment-components/
[4] Stripe Completes $1.1bn Bridge Acquisition — FinTech Magazine
https://fintechmagazine.com/articles/stripe-completes-us-1-1bn-bridge-acquisition
[5] Stripe Co-Founder Vows to Build the World’s Leading Stablecoin Infrastructure — TheStreet
https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/breaking-news/stripe-co-founder-vows-to-build-the-worlds-leading-stablecoin-infrastructure
[6] Tether Reports $13bn Profit for 2024 — CoinDesk
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/01/30/tether-reports-usd13b-profit-for-2024-with-rising-bitcoin-gold-prices-contributing
[7] Tether Hits $13bn Profits and All-Time High Treasury Holdings — Tether
https://tether.io/news/tether-hits-13-billion-profits-for-2024-and-all-time-highs-in-u-s-treasury-holdings-usdt-circulation-and-reserve-buffer-in-q4-2024-attestation/
[8] How Stablecoins Will Eat Payments — a16z Crypto
https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/how-stablecoins-will-eat-payments/
[9] The GENIUS Act of 2025 — Latham & Watkins
https://www.lw.com/en/insights/the-genius-act-of-2025-stablecoin-legislation-adopted-in-the-us
[10] Circle Shares Surge in NYSE Debut — Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/circle-shares-set-surge-nyse-debut-lifting-hopes-ipo-market-recovery-2025-06-05/
[11] Hidden Road Transaction Overview — FT Partners
https://www.ftpartners.com/transactions/hidden-road
[12] Deribit Transaction Overview — FT Partners
https://www.ftpartners.com/transactions/deribit
[13] JPMorgan Rolls Out JPMD on Coinbase’s Base — CoinDesk
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/12/jpmorgan-rolls-out-jpm-coin-leveraging-coinbase-s-base-report/
[14] Coinbase Ends Acquisition Talks for BVNK — CoinDesk
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/12/coinbase-ends-acquisition-talks-for-u-k-based-bvnk-fortune/
[15] MoonPay Acquires Helio for $175m — Architect Partners
https://architectpartners.com/moonpay-acquires-helio-for-a-reported-175m/
[16] MoonPay CEO Calls Iron Acquisition Its “Braintree Moment” — Global Fintech Insider
https://www.globalfintechinsider.com/p/moonpay-ceo-calls-the-acquisition
[17] Mastercard Eyes Zerohash Acquisition — CoinDesk
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/10/29/mastercard-eyes-zero-hash-acquisition-for-nearly-usd2b-bet-on-stablecoins-report
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Artis Partners LLP (FRN:1022191) is an appointed representative of Thornbridge Investment Management LLP (FRN: 713859), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
