Visa in Talks to Buy Fireblocks for $2.5bn, Axios Says

Visa is in late-stage talks to acquire Fireblocks, which builds stablecoin infrastructure and custody technology for financial firms, for about $2.5bn, Axios Pro reported on Thursday, citing multiple sources. No deal has been announced, and neither company has commented publicly.

If it goes ahead at that price, Fireblocks would be sold for less than a third of the valuation it reached in its last public funding round. It would also put Visa on the same path as its rival Mastercard, which completed its purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK in August.

Neither company has confirmed the talks

Axios says the talks are at a late stage but gives no further public detail of terms or timing, and frames them as part of a wider trend: “Traditional finance companies are picking up the pace of stablecoin adoption.” Visa and Fireblocks “did not immediately return” requests for comment, The Block reported.

Founded in 2018, Fireblocks provides institutional crypto custody and digital asset infrastructure, according to The Block, which says the company launched a stablecoin payments network in September 2025 with more than 40 participants, including Circle, Bridge, Zerohash and Yellow Card.

Fireblocks was valued at over $8bn in 2022

Fireblocks announced its last public round in January 2022. It raised $550m in a Series E co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital, “bringing the company’s valuation to over $8 billion”. At the time it said it supported more than 800 major institutions and that more than $2 trillion in digital assets had been transferred on its platform. Backers included General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Alphabet’s growth fund CapitalG and Altimeter, alongside existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Coatue and Bank of New York Mellon.

An acquisition at about $2.5bn would be roughly 31% of that $8bn figure.

Visa has been building its own stablecoin business

Visa has been moving into stablecoins on its own. In August it partnered with Zerohash to support stablecoin funding and payouts through Visa Direct, and it later said its stablecoin settlement volume had passed a $20bn annualised run rate, more than 15 times the level a year earlier, according to The Block. Visa has also teamed up with Mesh on a plan to let people spend crypto and stablecoin balances at Visa merchants straight from their wallet apps, though no launch date has been set.

Mastercard’s route has been to buy. It agreed in March to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8bn, including $300m in contingent payments, The Block says, and completed the deal on 3 August. “In a multi-money world where fiat, stablecoins and tokenized deposits and other forms of value coexist, the next payments paradigm will defined by how effectively each rail, network or form of money connects and works together,” Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert said then. Since closing, the two have launched a Global Money Platform combining Mastercard payments with BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure, and Mastercard has added a Stablecoin Security API that scores risk before payments go on-chain.

The reported price points to a buyer’s market

Two numbers stand out in the report. The first is the discount. Fireblocks raised money at a valuation of over $8bn in January 2022; Axios’s figure of about $2.5bn implies a buyer paying well under a third of that. TSN has not seen any later public valuation for Fireblocks, and private valuations can move without announcement, so the gap is between two snapshots more than four years apart.

The second is the comparison with BVNK. If Visa pays about $2.5bn, it would be paying more than the up to $1.8bn Mastercard agreed for BVNK, reported by The Block, for a company that combines custody with payments infrastructure. Both card networks would then own a stablecoin infrastructure provider, after Visa spent the past few months building its own stablecoin settlement business through partners such as Zerohash.

What remains unknown is almost everything that would make this a deal: the structure, whether investors approve it, regulatory review and timing. Until Visa or Fireblocks says something, the story rests on Axios’s sources, and the next confirmation, or denial, has to come from the companies.