Kraken just acquired Reap for $ 600M - and it's not just a bold move, it's a signal.

@reapglobal builds payment infrastructure for businesses: corporate cards, expense management, cross-border settlements. For @fx, this is a direct entry into the B2B payments stack - territory that crypto exchanges rarely touched before.
But zoom out, and Kraken isn't alone.
Over the past three years, the payments sector has become the most active M&A battleground in crypto. Nine major deals, over $5.5B deployed:
@Mastercard → @BVNKFinance ($1.8B): the clearest sign yet that card networks are buying into stablecoin infrastructure rather than building it.
@Ripple → Hidden Road ($1.25B): a prime brokerage play, but with settlement and payments at its core.
@stripe → @Stablecoin ($1.1B): the deal that set the tone for everything that followed, stablecoins as serious payment rails, not a crypto experiment .
@stripe → @privy_io (~*$230M): wallets as the missing layer on top of Bridge's orchestration
@Ripple → Rail ($200M) and @0xPolygon → @Coinme / @0xsequence ($200M): infrastructure bets on on/off-ramp and wallet layers.
@moonpay → Helio ($175M): doubling down on merchant-facing crypto payments.
@ModernTreasury → @beam_cash ($40M): quiet but telling - a $ 2B fintech adding stablecoin rails for corporates.
The pattern is consistent. Whether it's a card network, a crypto exchange, or a payments fintech, everyone is acquiring the same thing: the infrastructure to move money onchain.
The consolidation phase has started. What used to be fragmented startups building isolated pieces of the stack is now becoming integrated platforms owned by well-capitalized players.
The question isn't whether stablecoin payments will go mainstream. It's who controls the rails when they do.