Why Mastercard’s $2-Billion Crypto Move Could End Traditional Banking Hours

Important points

• Mastercard is in talks to acquire Zerohash, following its previous interest in BVNK, to facilitate 24/7 stablecoin payments.

• The deal provides Mastercard with a turnkey on-chain payments stack, potentially accelerating its transition from pilot to production.

• Stablecoin-based payments allow banks and merchants to avoid batch cutoffs and weekend delays and enable continuous transactions.

• However, operational, compliance and liquidity challenges mean a hybrid phase will likely continue until full 24/7 implementation.

Mastercard is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash for $1.5 billion to $2 billion, after previously considering a similar-sized deal with stablecoin platform BVNK.

Rather than building all on-chain components in-house, Mastercard appears to be considering acquiring a turnkey stablecoin infrastructure provider that can connect to existing payment networks. This could accelerate payments beyond the constraints of traditional business days and towards a more continuous 24/7 model.

What you can really buy with the rumored $2 billion

Zero Hash and BVNK perform similar heavy lifting for institutions. They provide regulated storage, conversion, payments, and orchestration that allows banks, brokers, or processors to move between fiat and stablecoins without having to rebuild compliance from scratch.

Integrating one or both with Mastercard accelerates your pilot-to-production roadmap and provides licensing footprint and client integration from day one. While there may be no guarantee that these negotiations will conclude, the strategic intent is clear.

Why are “banking hours” starting to be abolished?

Today, card payments are still made through batch windows, weekday deadlines, and correspondent chains. Stablecoins operate beyond the limits of banking hours. Mastercard already has two important footholds in that world.

• Multi-token network (MTN): A toolkit for secure and programmable transactions across tokenized money and assets.

• Cryptographic credentials: A validation layer that allows exchanges and wallets to transact using human-readable identifiers while maintaining compliance checks.

Adding stablecoin payments to that stack allows acquirers to receive funds at any time, receive net debt on-chain, and bulk treasury within minutes instead of T+1 or T+2.

Did you know? In August 2025, Mastercard’s Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa division launched a program with Circle that allows acquirers to settle in USDC (USDC) or EURC (EURC), and pay merchants directly from those balances.

how it works

Customers pay using their cards or linked wallets. Instead of waiting for a fiat batch to finish, acquirers can choose to receive payments in stablecoins. Obligations between issuers and acquirers are offset on-chain through approved storage and liquidity partners.

Finance teams can then process funds in bulk in near real-time, apply programmable rules for foreign exchange (FX) and fees, and convert back to fiat as needed. Acquisitions like Zero Hash provide the storage and payments backbone, and BVNK adds enterprise-grade stablecoin orchestration.

For banks and processors, this means fewer vendors to integrate with and faster time to market.

what happens to the ecosystem

For banks and acquirers, always-on payments reduce pre-funding requirements and intraday overdraft risks, while alleviating weekend and holiday bottlenecks.

However, it also brings new responsibilities. On-chain monitoring, key management, and smart contract risk management must all meet card network standards.

For merchants and treasurers, continuous payments through stablecoins can improve working capital efficiency and streamline reconciliation. Some choose to keep stablecoins as part of their flows, while others automatically convert to local currency. Either way, transparent on-chain records simplify audits and shorten dispute timelines.

For cross-border payments, stablecoins shorten correspondent chains and keep payment corridors open even after hours. While these will not remove all exchange and tax complexity, they can significantly reduce the mechanical friction that currently makes international payments slow and unpredictable.

What can delay the transition to 24/7

Although 24/7 settlement is within reach, several obstacles can delay the transition.

• Fiat lamp limitations: The shutdown of automated clearinghouses and the single euro payment area, real-time gross settlement maintenance windows, and bank compliance approvals could reintroduce “business hours” when moving between crypto and cash.

• Operational risks: Key storage, smart contract bugs, chain congestion, reserve or depeg concerns require thorough audits, incident response plans, and appropriate insurance coverage.

• Compliance and accounting realities: Continuous resolution requires redesigning always-on anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions checks, travel rule requirements, dispute and chargeback handling, and enterprise resource planning or reporting workflows. Many treasurers are still likely to auto-convert to fiat in the early stages.

• Market and vendor constraints: Liquidity can be thin depending on venue and time of day, and spreads often widen during times of stress. Stablecoin issuer governance, oracle reliability, custody connectivity, and network fees can all become bottlenecks at scale.

In other words, we can expect a hybrid phase in which on-chain payments will continue to expand as statutory infrastructure, policies, and back-office tools catch up.

What to watch next

Several indicators will reveal whether “banking hours” are disappearing for good.

• Retrieving completed zero hashes

• The final outcome of the BVNK negotiations, whether an agreement was reached and why

• USDC and EURC payments expand to new regions and high volume acquirers

• The deployment of MTN and Crypto Credential is progressing from pilot to actual bank or processor deployment.

With these elements in place, payments will follow business needs rather than time.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. All investment and trading moves involve risk and readers should conduct their own research when making decisions.