Mastercard and Chainlink Partner to Enable 3 Billion Cardholders to Buy Crypto On-Chain

Mastercard and Chainlink have announced a partnership that will enable more than three billion Mastercard holders to purchase cryptocurrencies directly on-chain. The service integrates several players into a single flow, allowing card payments to be processed by Shift4, fiat currency to be custodies by zerohash, and the final token swap to be executed by XSwap and Uniswap on decentralized markets.

Chainlink's interoperability protocol is used to pass transaction data between the card network and multiple blockchains. Raj Dhamodharan, who leads blockchain efforts at Mastercard, said the firm wants to "bridge the gap between on-chain commerce and off-chain transactions."

The deal helps enable a "critical connection between the traditional payments world and the over three billion cardholders in the Mastercard user base," according to Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Mastercard has been slowly moving deeper into the cryptocurrency space, having partnered with MoonPay last month to let users spend stablecoins at more than 150 million merchants worldwide, and with Kraken in April to introduce cryptocurrency debit cards.

The integration of Chainlink's services with Mastercard's network will provide a seamless and secure way for millions of users to access and use cryptocurrencies in their daily lives. This partnership is a significant step forward in the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in the global payments industry.