American payments major Mastercard is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Zerohash, a Chicago-based crypto infrastructure firm, for about $2 billion.
If the deal closes, this would be a turning point for Mastercard, which has seen its primary source of revenue- transaction fees- fall on account of an increasing preference for alternative payment methods that don’t require plastic cards.
Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a big threat to the highly regulated financial system, where transactions can be processed in mere seconds compared to the days it takes currently using conventional financial intermediaries.
Zerohash is one of the leading cryptocurrency infrastructure companies, which allows payment processors and fintech firms to integrate cryptocurrency payments to their platforms through APIs and other embeddable tools.
The stakes are quite high here for Mastercard, which is increasingly facing competition from peer-to-peer or direct payment platforms in many geographies in which it operates.
Many enterprise clients are increasingly looking to integrate stablecoins into their payment infrastructure- tokenised versions of leading fiat currencies like the USD, Euro and British Pound.
With this acquisition, Mastercard could leverage its vast network of clients to deploy Zerohash’s infrastructure, helping them integrate this new form of payment into their digital infrastructure. Irish-American payments platform Stripe has led the way here, paying $1.1 billion for stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge last year. The stakes are high for Mastercard, as this acquisition could mean the difference between resurgence and obscurity for the payments provider.
