Mastercard could soon make a significant investment to fully enter the crypto space.
According to ReutersThe company is in advanced talks to acquire Zero Hash for roughly $1.5 to $2 billion, a move that, if completed, would fold a regulated crypto settlement network into one of the world’s largest payment processors.
On the surface, it looks like yet another business experiment with digital assets. Below that, it’s about something bigger: an attempt to rebuild the sewer system of money itself around stablecoins, not banks.
Zero Hash is not a consumer-facing brand, but the silent infrastructure behind various tokenization efforts.
Founded in 2017, it is regulated as a money transmitter in the US, has a New York BitLicense and operates under equivalent virtual asset frameworks in Europe, Canada and Australia.
The company already processes flows for issuers like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Republic, allowing their tokenized funds to move value across twenty-two chains and seven major stablecoins.
Earlier this year, it raised $104 million at a $1 billion valuation, led by Interactive Brokers, with backing from Morgan Stanley, Apollo and SoFi. This shows that the traditional financial sector treats the settlement in the chain less as a curiosity and more as a utility.
From pilots to platform
For Mastercard, the appeal is clear. The network moves trillions per year, but remains tied to the old money calendar: clearing on weekdays, T+1 or T+2 settlement, closed on weekends. Zero Hash runs twenty-four hours a day.
Owning it would allow Mastercard to settle card and account-to-account payments in regulated stablecoins, compressing those delays to T+0 and keeping everything within compliance boundaries.
The company has hinted at this direction before, with its ‘wallets-to-checkouts’ stablecoin pilot launched in April 2025, but that was still a sandbox. A purchase would turn it into infrastructure.
The timing couldn’t be better. Stablecoins now total more than $300 billion in circulation, with monthly on-chain settlements of approximately $1.25 trillion, according to the a16z report. State of Crypto 2025 Report.
Most of that volume still flows between exchanges and DeFi protocols; However, a rising share comes from cross-border payouts and fintech wallets, the very niches where card networks struggle to maintain high margins.
Visa has already partnered with Allium to publish stablecoin analytics, Stripe has quietly re-enabled USDC settlements, and PayPal runs its own token. Mastercard risks disintermediation unless it operates a similar railroad of its own.
Zero Hash also sits at the intersection of two fast-growing markets: stablecoins and tokenized treasuries. Much of the $35 billion now tied up in on-chain real-world asset products, mainly short-term T-bills backing stablecoins, passes through similar entities.
That gives Mastercard an entry point not only into consumer payments but also into institutional treasury flows, a part of the market where instant, programmable settlement could replace the slower web of correspondent banks and clearinghouses.
The overlap of these two systems, consumer payouts and institutional liquidity, may explain why Mastercard is willing to pay approximately twice Zero Hash’s last valuation.
The railroad war continues
If the deal closes, it would mark the first time a tier-one card network has owned a fully regulated stablecoin processor. The broader context is a silent arms race. Visa, Stripe, and even Coinbase are investing in fiat-to-stablecoin bridges to absorb future settlement costs.
Everyone knows that whoever controls the compliant, always-on layer between bank accounts and blockchains will effectively own the next generation of payments. Mastercard’s move reframes that race: instead of experimenting alongside it, the company is pulling the rails under its own management.
There are obstacles. Zero Hash’s licenses require change of control approvals from state regulators, the NYDFS and European authorities under MiCA. That signing could take months. And while the US Senate’s stablecoin bill passed earlier this year, it is still awaiting full enactment.
Yet the direction of the policy is clear. Both the US and European frameworks now treat fiat-backed stablecoins as legitimate financial instruments, setting reserve and disclosure standards that institutional users can accept. That clarity lowers the reputational risk for Mastercard to integrate them directly.
The economics are tempting. Even a sliver of global stablecoin flow could generate material revenue if it were monetized as a network. A 0.75% share of the $12 trillion annualized stablecoin volume would give Mastercard approximately $90 billion in addressable settlement activity.
At a blended take rate of 12-20 basis points, that’s $100 to $180 million in potential annual revenue, small next to $25 billion in revenue, but growing much faster than card transactions. And unlike exchanges, these costs are based on data, compliance and liquidity, not consumer spending.
The bigger prize is strategic. As more money lives on-chain, card networks must decide whether to compete with or become the clearing layer. Mastercard seems to have made its choice.
Zero Hash provides not only APIs and licenses, but also a template for how traditional payments giants can survive the shift: by absorbing the crypto infrastructure before it absorbs it.
