Visa and Fireblocks: A $2.5 Billion Report, and a Denial

On Thursday 22 October 2026 Axios reported that Visa was in late-stage talks to buy Fireblocks, a company that builds crypto custody and wallet infrastructure for banks, exchanges and payment firms, for about $2.5 billion. The report cited unnamed sources. The same day Fireblocks denied it, telling The Block the report was "news to us, and not true at present time". Visa declined to comment. No deal has been announced by either company.

Key facts

• The report: Axios, 22 October 2026, citing multiple unnamed sources: Visa in late-stage talks to acquire Fireblocks for about $2.5 billion.
• The denial: Fireblocks to The Block, the same day: "We are aware of the rumors about a possible acquisition of Fireblocks by Visa. This is news to us, and not true at present time."
• Visa: a spokesperson told The Block, "We don't comment on rumors or speculation."
• The last valuation: $8 billion, when Fireblocks raised $550 million in a Series E round in January 2022, as The Block reports.
• The company: founded in 2018; it launched a stablecoin payments network in September 2025 with more than 40 participants, including Circle, Bridge, Zerohash and Yellow Card.
• Status: a report and a denial. Nothing has been signed or announced.

What does Fireblocks actually do?

It sells the machinery other companies use to hold and move digital assets.

A bank or an exchange that wants to offer crypto has to solve the same problem a person with a wallet solves, at a much larger scale: keep the keys safe, and still let the right payments out. Fireblocks provides the wallets, the signing, the approval rules and the connections between institutions, so a customer does not have to build them.

Fireblocks says in its developer documentation that it has transferred over $3 trillion in digital assets and serves thousands of digital asset businesses. Those are the company's own figures, as stated on 23 October 2026.

What is an MPC wallet?

A wallet where no single place ever holds the whole key.

An ordinary wallet has one private key. Whoever holds it can spend. Multi-party computation, or MPC, splits the job: several parties each hold a share of the key, and they compute a signature together without ever putting the key back in one piece.

Fireblocks says its version, MPC-CMP, never gathers a private key as one whole. It spreads the shares across separate cloud environments, so one compromised data centre does not expose a key. Separately, its Policy Engine applies rules the customer sets, which decide whether a transaction is blocked, approved or needs more signers. That is how one stolen server stops being enough to empty a wallet.

It does not remove every risk. As the Bitget theft showed, signing systems do what the systems upstream of them say, and a correct signature over a bad instruction is still a loss.

Why would a card network want a custody company?

The report does not say, and neither company has explained anything, because neither has confirmed talks.

What can be said is that custody and stablecoin payments are where payment companies are building. Fireblocks already runs a stablecoin payments network. A card network that wanted to move stablecoins for banks and merchants would need exactly the plumbing Fireblocks sells: wallets, signing and settlement between institutions. That is context, not a reason anyone has given.

How should you read "not true at present time"?

As a denial of the report as it stands, and nothing more.

The statement says there is no deal now. It does not say there have been no conversations, and it does not rule out a future one. The honest position today is that one outlet reported talks, the company named in them denied it, and the buyer said nothing.

What does this mean for you?

Most people never deal with Fireblocks directly. If you hold crypto on an exchange or through a fintech app, the company behind it may use infrastructure like this, and an acquisition of a provider would not, by itself, change who owns your balance.

• Know who holds the keys. On a platform, the platform does. Its custody provider is a detail of how it does that.
• Read the terms, not the headlines. What happens to your assets if the platform changes hands is set out in its terms of service.
• Treat a report as a report. Do not trade on unconfirmed deal news.

If you would rather hold the keys yourself, Nura Wallet is self-custody — the keys stay on your device — and any EVM wallet can reach the network by adding Nura Chain to your wallet. For how regulators are thinking about who may hold keys for whom, see the SEC's crypto custody proposal.

This article will be updated if either company announces a deal. The original report is Axios's; the denial and Visa's response were given to The Block.