Mastercard enables onchain crypto purchase with Chainlink

Mastercard has teamed up with Chainlink to enable direct purchase of crypto onchain for cardholders worldwide.

According to a press release on 24 June, the partnership will connect Mastercard’s 3 billion card holders in the offchain payments world directly to the onchain DeFi world.

The project is also being implemented in close partnership with zerohash, Swapper Finance, Shift4 Payments, and XSwap, and the Uniswap protocol.

A multilayered collaboration

Mastercard card holders will be able to securely purchase crypto assets directly onchain through a secure fiat-to-crypto conversion process. 

By combining Chainlink’s secure interoperability infrastructure and Mastercard’s trusted global payments network, the two companies will remove long-standing barriers that have kept mainstream users from accessing the onchain economy.

Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink said:

“This is the type of traditional finance and decentralized finance convergence that Chainlink was built to make possible. I’m excited about Chainlink’s ability to enable this critical connection between the traditional payments world and the over three billion cardholders in the Mastercard user base, directly into the next generation trading environments of onchain decentralized exchanges.”

While zerohash provides the onchain service and liquidity needed to convert fiat into crypto, additional integration support comes from Shift4 Payments, Swapper Finance, and XSwap to deliver a next generation app experience, which utilizes the Uniswap protocol.

Driving crypto adoption

Cryptocurrencies are seeing wider adoption in the mainstream sectors. For example, the U.S. housing authority recently indicated it’ll consider crypto holdings in qualifying people for mortgages. 

This means there is a need to make crypto access as easy as possible for everyone, especially those who are not knowledgeable about the technology. The partnership between Mastercard and Chainlink is doing just that.

By bridging the gap between crypto-native technology and real-world usability, more widespread adoption will likely be seen in the near future.