Visa in advanced talks to buy Fireblocks for about $2.5 billion, Axios reports
Key Facts
Visa is in advanced talks to acquire Fireblocks for about $2.5 billion, Axios reported on October 22, 2026, a development that puts the digital asset services company at the center of the payments network's expansion. The companies have an existing commercial relationship, with Fireblocks listing Visa among its clients alongside Worldpay, Revolut, MoneyGram, Bridge and Euronet. The reported value of the potential acquisition is below Fireblocks' $8 billion valuation following a funding round announced in January 2022. The company raised $550 million in that Series E round, according to its announcement at the time. In competition among payment networks, Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK. Mastercard said the acquisition strengthens its ability to connect digital assets with traditional payment rails.
Fireblocks says it secures more than 550 million wallets, according to the company's 2026 announcement on the scale of its digital asset business. It added that it facilitated $5.9 trillion in digital asset transactions during 2025. In liquidity services, its "Liquidity Marketplace" platform allows payment companies to request quotes simultaneously from the trading desks they work with. The company described the platform's capabilities as allowing clients to "compare them side by side and execute at the best price" within the same platform. Fireblocks also expanded its services by acquiring TRES Finance, which specializes in crypto accounting, reconciliation and financial controls for digital assets.
The acquisition talks follow an acceleration in Visa's stablecoin settlement activity, with the company announcing in September 2026 that its annualized settlement run rate had exceeded $20 billion. The company said that pace was more than 15 times the level recorded a year earlier. As an earlier point of comparison, the run rate had exceeded $3.5 billion annually by the end of November 2025, according to Visa's announcement of the launch of stablecoin settlement in the United States. It then announced in April 2026 that the annualized run rate had reached $7 billion. The increase announced at the time was 50% from the previous quarter, according to the company. In the same announcement, Visa said its global stablecoin settlement pilot program now supported 9 blockchains, including Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar.
In cards, Visa said the number of stablecoin-linked card programs exceeded 160 worldwide in its fiscal second quarter of 2026. Payment volume through these programs grew about 200% from the same period a year earlier, according to the company. In an October statement, Visa said business and commercial card programs accounted for about 17% of spending volume on its stablecoin-linked cards during fiscal 2026 through the measurement date. On business funding, the company said borrowing costs for programs participating in settlement financing facilities had fallen by as much as 30% as of the September announcement. Visa attributed the decline to lenders becoming more comfortable underwriting financing for those programs.
In banking, Lloyds Banking Group tested settling obligations to Visa using USDC in a trial announced in September 2026. The trial lasted 7 days and involved a series of dollar settlement obligations totaling $750,000, according to Visa. In money transfers, the company announced that stablecoin prefunding through Visa Direct had entered commercial operation, with Inyo Global as the first service enabler. The service allows eligible companies to prefund cross-border payments using USDC in near real time, according to Visa's announcement. Visa is scheduled to announce its fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results on October 27, 2026, after the market closes.