It looks like Ripple is making good business decisions when it comes to choose partners. One of its partners, Earthport, is set to be bought by the credit card giant Mastercard for $233 Million GBP (or $305 million USD). Before that, Visa was set to acquire Earthport since the end of December, a story we covered on our blog.

According to reports from Reuters, Mastercard, which was informed about Visa trying to acquire this company, decided to offer over 10% more on the original offer of $198 million GPB made by the other credit card giant.

Ever since the two companies have started to battle for Earthport’s attention, the stocks of the company have rose 30%. The investors know that being owned by such a major company will make a quality of life difference for Earthport, which will have unseen chances for growth after the acquisition.

The official reason Mastercard gave to decide to acquire the company was that it was interested in expanding its cross-border network, the same reason originally cited by Visa. What is more ironic about the whole situation is that credit card companies, which generally have a very negative stance when talking about cryptos are both fighting to buy a company that uses the services for Ripple, a crypto company.

Before the rumors of the acquisition, though, Earthport was not living its best times ever. The shares of the company were down 28% as expenses were growing up and profit was not. The company was already considering making changes when the offer appeared. Part of the reason could have been linked to crypto bear market, but the company had its own internal issues as well.

It was reported that the directors of the company unanimously recommended that the company should be sold to Mastercard, whose shares were 1.8% up recently on the New York Stock Exchange.

About Ripple and Earthport

Earthport is a Ripple Labs partner and both companies offer cross-border payment services together. The partnership was officially started back in 2014 when Earthport was integrated into Ripple’s protocol.

Using Ripple’s solution, the customer from Earthport could spend less to manage liquidity and to maintain a highly professional network.

Payment Processing Is A Hot Topic Now

It is no wonder that Visa and Mastercard were both interested in the company. Ripple has grown a lot in recent years and so have the money remittance industry. Payment processing is a very hot area at the moment and technological changes such as the blockchain technology are making huge changes in the field.

Earthport, using Ripple’s services, offer an alternative to traditional systems that can have lower costs. Obviously, not even Mastercard would be able to buy Ripple, so buying Earthport is a good bet.