Circle buys Singaporean platform Tazapay for $400 million

He who pays his debts gets richer. Circle announced on Monday the acquisition of Tazapay, a Singaporean cross-border payments platform, for approximately $400 million in shares. This is the largest acquisition of the USDC issuer since that of the Poloniex exchange in 2018. The operation is part of a busy week for stablecoins, as the big names in payments are accelerating the construction of their own on-chain highways rather than renting those of others.

Tazapay, the last link that Circle wanted to avoid building

Tazapay processes more than $25 billion in annual volume across around 100 markets, and 60% of that volume already flows through stablecoins, according to information reported by CoinDesk. The company has already been helping Circle design its payment network (Circle Payments Network) since 2025. Suffice to say that the takeover looks less like a bet than the formalization of a partnership already well underway.

The issue can be summed up in one sentence: rather than negotiating country by country with local banks, Circle suddenly recovers the last mile infrastructure. Direction 2027 for the official closing, time to pass under the caudine forks of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Mastercard opened the ball with BVNK

Barely five days earlier, Mastercard finalized the purchase of BVNK, a British stablecoin infrastructure platform, for a total amount that could climb to $1.8 billion. BVNK turns around $30 billion per year for clients like Worldpay and Deel, in more than 130 countries. Two payment giants, two redemptions in just a few days.

The calculation is the same on both sides. A card network or a stablecoin issuer that does not have its own conversion rails between fiat currencies and digital assets (stablecoins) remains dependent on third-party providers, with the margin and slowness that this implies. Buying rather than renting, this is the logic that has driven Visa, Mastercard and Circle since the start of the year.

The buyout that is worth more than the balance sheet line

The price, on paper, remains modest. 400 million dollars is a straw on the scale of Circle, valued in tens of billions since its IPO. But the real value cannot be seen in the number. It nestles in the 100 markets already covered by Tazapay, a network that Circle would have taken years to build on its own.

The fact remains that this type of all-stock operation has its share of unknowns. Closing will not take place until 2027, and Singapore's regulatory agreement is never a foregone conclusion.

European banks look at the scene differently