In 2024 and 2025, we’ve seen traditional financial and payments giants make bold moves into the crypto world, not with tentative pilots, but with billions-of-dollars acquisitions and strategic pushes toward crypto infrastructure. Headlines might frame these as reactions to fear or competitive pressure, but the deeper truth is far more structural: crypto isn’t being fought, it’s being integrated and internalized into the future of finance.
Take Stripe, the global payments leader that catalysed the modern internet payments era. After stepping away from Bitcoin payments years ago, Stripe returned with conviction, acquiring stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge for $1.1 billion and, shortly after, announcing its acquisition of crypto wallet infrastructure provider Privy to embed wallets into applications without traditional friction. These moves aren’t random; they’re a coherent strategy to build a unified, internet-native payments platform where fiat and digital assets coexist seamlessly.
Privy’s technology, powering over 75 million wallets today, allows developers to integrate user wallets directly into products, reducing the onboarding friction that has held back mainstream crypto use. Combined with Bridge’s stablecoin rails, Stripe is positioning itself to move value anywhere, instantly and cheaply, while preserving the enterprise-grade experience its merchants expect.
Consider Visa’s recent partnership with Mercuryo. Announced in January 2026, this collaboration expands Visa Direct’s real-time crypto-to-fiat off-ramping capabilities by integrating it with Mercuryo’s global payments infrastructure platform. The result: millions of users of wallets, exchanges, and platforms can now convert digital assets into fiat and receive funds directly onto Visa cards in near real time and at lower cost, massively reducing traditional settlement delays and onboarding friction.
Then consider Mastercard, one of the world’s largest payment networks. Mastercard was in late-stage talks to acquire stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure provider Zerohash in a deal reportedly valued at up to $2 billion, a move that, if it were to go ahead, would mark one of the largest stablecoin-infrastructure acquisitions ever. Zerohash’s API-driven plumbing enables banks, fintechs, and merchants to embed crypto and tokenisation services into existing platforms, handling custody, compliance, and settlement.
Mastercard’s strategy reflects a deeper truth: rather than resisting crypto, it’s reshaping its role from facilitator of tokenised value to owner of the regulated rails that make tokenised finance compliant and scalable at scale. Moreover, the company had also explored acquiring BVNK, a fast-growing stablecoin payment infrastructure firm, a sign that this isn’t an isolated bet but a sustained push into digital settlement.
So what’s really happening here?
1. They’re Not Threatened. They’re Modernising the Stack
Traditional finance doesn’t see crypto as a threat because it displaces payments. It sees crypto as a parallel layer of infrastructure that can be merged with existing rails to make settlement faster, cheaper, and global. In other words, they’re not preparing for two separate systems; they’re preparing for one hybrid system where digital asset rails and fiat rails coexist and complement each other.
That’s why these firms aren’t launching standalone token networks. They’re acquiring infrastructure that slots into existing PSP stacks, compliance frameworks, and settlement systems. They aren’t reinventing payments, they’re upgrading them.
2. They’re Competing on Value Movement, Not Just Transactions
Legacy payments were designed for a world of batch settlement, business hours, and regional clearing systems. Crypto introduces programmable settlement, 24/7 global value transfer, and lower infrastructure costs. This isn’t just about accepting crypto; it’s about reducing operational drag on cross-border transfers, treasury flows, and real-time merchant settlement.
That’s why stablecoins are a strategic priority, and why companies are consolidating stablecoin rails under their control: they offer instant, predictable transfer of value that complements, and sometimes outperforms, legacy settlement systems.
3. They’re Fusing Compliance With Innovation
A core misconception is that crypto is inherently risky, unregulated, or chaotic. But the firms now being acquired are all designed to make crypto compliant, interoperable, and enterprise-grade. This allows incumbents to preserve their regulatory posture while offering the benefits of digital-native settlement and wallet experiences.
In essence, they aren’t adopting crypto as is; they are integrating crypto’s rails into the ecosystem under compliance-ready frameworks that enterprises and regulators can trust.
4. This Is About Broadening Access. Not Replacing Existing Rails
Traditional finance isn’t trying to sideline the systems it already operates; it’s trying to extend them. The future isn’t cards vs. crypto rails, or banks vs. blockchains. It’s all of the above working together. And that’s why these acquisitions are strategic, not speculative.
In the next decade, we’ll look back on this era as the moment when global payment networks stopped thinking about crypto as a fringe experiment and started thinking about it as core infrastructure.
That’s not fear. That’s preparation. And that’s precisely why the leaders in finance aren’t running away from crypto, they’re building with it.
If you zoom out from individual acquisitions and partnerships, a clear pattern emerges. The next 18 months won’t be defined by experimentation; they’ll be defined by normalization.
Stablecoin volume will skyrocket
Stablecoins have already proven product-market fit for moving value globally, but we’re still early. As more PSPs, banks, and payment networks integrate stablecoin rails directly into their infrastructure, volume will grow rapidly, not because users are speculating, but because stablecoins are simply the fastest, cheapest way to settle payments and move money across borders. Treasury flows, cross-border commerce, payroll, and merchant settlement will increasingly default to stablecoins behind the scenes.
Global regulation will clarify, and acceptance will follow.
The regulatory picture is shifting from uncertainty to structure. Over the next 18 months, we’ll see clearer stablecoin and digital asset frameworks emerge across major markets. That clarity won’t slow adoption; it will accelerate it. As compliance becomes standardized, crypto payments will move from “experimental” to “approved,” unlocking broader merchant and PSP participation without changing how payments operate day to day.
Acquisitions will continue, and they’ll be very intentional.
Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard aren’t buying crypto companies to own tokens; they’re acquiring monetizable infrastructure. Compliance tooling, on- and off-ramps, wallet infrastructure, stablecoin settlement, payroll, and merchant payments are all revenue-generating layers. Expect continued M&A as incumbents race to own the rails that power the digital value movement, rather than renting them from third parties.
Crypto payments will become a standard option.
I’m not suggesting Amazon flips a switch tomorrow. But more and more merchants, especially global, digital-first businesses, will start displaying the sign: “We accept crypto.” And when you reach checkout, crypto won’t feel exotic or separate. It will simply sit alongside familiar options: Card. BNPL (like Klarna). Crypto.
Same flow. Same UX. Same trust. Different rail underneath.
That’s the key shift: crypto payments won’t win by forcing new behavior. They’ll win by disappearing into the payment stack, becoming just another way value moves, faster, cheaper, and globally, through the systems merchants and consumers already rely on.