Mastercard is reportedly looking to sell its real-time payments unit Nets, as its recent acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK signals where the card network sees the future of global payments heading.
Mastercard is reportedly looking to offload its payments unit, Nets, after announcing a deal to acquire the Danish real-time payments company for a company-record $3.2bn in 2019. The deal saw it acquire a majority stake in Nets’ corporate services businesses, including its clearing, instant payment services and e-billing solutions.
The Financial Times reported Mastercard has brought in investment bankers to assist in the sale. Private equity groups have been cited as early contenders to acquire Nets, which is expected to sell for less than its original purchase price. The FT also reported that the unit has dragged on Mastercard’s overall growth, a factor likely contributing to the decision to divest.
Mastercard completed its acquisition of Nets in 2021 from Nexi Group in a bid to leverage the Nordic region’s then-burgeoning instant payments sector.
Paul Stoddart, then Mastercard President of New Platforms and now CEO of Forthline, said the Nets acquisition enabled the company to “support a broader set of account-to-account capabilities”.
Card networks such have long been alert to the potential of account-to-account (A2A) payments, which can bypass card networks entirely for instant bank settlements. The rise of A2A presented a structural challenge to card networks, whose revenue depends on transaction fees generated through the four-party model. Acquiring Nets gave Mastercard a foothold in the infrastructure underpinning A2A in Europe, allowing it to participate in – rather than be displaced by – the shift toward instant bank-to-bank payments.
Nets, according to the Financial Times, reported $370m in annual revenue last year, with an EBITDA of approximately $100m.
Alongside bulking its operations in Denmark and Norway, Mastercard was able to launch real-time payment (RTP) and A2A services leveraging Nets’ infrastructure. In July 2021, it launched PayPort+, a cloud-native gateway that provides access to RTP rails, such as the UK’s Faster Payments Network.
According to data from Vocalink, a Mastercard-owned company, Mastercard processed 99.3 million automated payments on peak days using the UK’s automated clearing house system, Bacs.
However, despite its ongoing commitment to RTP, Mastercard appears to have shifted its focus toward where the next wave of innovation in global payment rails is heading.
Are stablecoins Mastercard’s new RTP answer?
The potential sale of Nets follows Mastercard’s acquisition of stablecoin payment infrastructure company BVNK for $1.8bn, announced on 17 March 2026.
Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC enable near-instant, 24/7 cross-border settlement, and have quickly gained momentum across the payments industry. That momentum has been further bolstered by regulatory progress in the US, where advancing stablecoin legislation – including the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act – is moving to provide clearer frameworks for stablecoin issuance and use in payments.
In 2025, BVNK processed a company record $30bn in annualised stablecoin payment volume across 2.8 million transactions. The majority were business-to-business, with BVNK citing speed and transparency as qualities that “traditional rails can’t match”.
Mastercard intends to leverage BVNK’s infrastructure to connect stablecoin rails alongside existing fiat rails, giving companies greater interoperability when offering both fiat and digital currency payments.
Upon the announcement of the BVNK acquisition, Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard, said: “We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will in time provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits.
“We want to support them and their customers with a best in class, highly compliant, interoperable offering that brings the benefits of tokenized money to the real world. Adding on-chain rails to our network will support speed and programmability for virtually every type of transaction.”
Payment Expert has reached out to Mastercard for comment.
