Chainlink and Mastercard have partnered to let more than three billion Mastercard holders buy cryptocurrencies directly on-chain. This new service is designed to help people easily convert their regular money into crypto, a move that aims to help many who have not used crypto get started.
The deal brings together several Web3 companies to make the process smooth and secure. Shift4 Payments handles the card payments, while ZeroHash looks after the money and provides crypto liquidity. Then, XSwap and Uniswap swap the tokens on decentralized markets. Chainlink’s technology connects Mastercard with different blockchains to make everything work together.
Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s executive vice president for blockchain and digital assets, said, “There’s no doubt about it — people want to be able to easily connect to the digital assets ecosystem, and vice versa.” This shows Mastercard’s clear goal to make crypto more accessible to its huge user base.
Mastercard has been working on crypto for a while now. Earlier this year, it teamed up with Kraken to offer crypto debit cards to the UK and Europe to spend their digital assets across more than 150 million merchants worldwide.
Meanwhile, it also partnered with MetaMask to launch a self-custody crypto card. The company also announced tokenizing 30% of its transactions in 2024.
Other big players in payments are also moving into crypto. Visa, Mastercard’s main rival, joined Coinbase in 2024 to let some users instantly withdraw and deposit crypto.
Just recently, Visa created a Web3 digital asset platform and invested in a stablecoin payment company called BVNK.
Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov explained that the deal creates “a critical connection between the traditional payments world and the over three billion cardholders in the Mastercard user base.” This partnership marks another big step in bringing crypto to everyday users worldwide.
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