Chainlink and Mastercard partner to enable on-chain crypto purchases

Chainlink has partnered with Mastercard to enable direct on-chain bitcoin purchases to cardholders globally. Chainlink (LINK) and Mastercard have launched a partnership that would allow over 3 billion Mastercard users to make off-chain payments for straight on-chain crypto purchases.

According to the release, the collaboration is an important step towards increasing the acceptance of decentralised banking by providing consumers with secure fiat-to-crypto conversions.

“This is the type of convergence between traditional finance and decentralised finance that Chainlink was designed to enable,” Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov stated.

“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 on-chain decentralised exchanges,” according to him.

Bridging on-chain commerce and off-chain transactions

Several big players in both cryptocurrency and traditional finance are collaborating in this multifaceted collaboration. ZeroHash, a cryptocurrency, stablecoin, and tokenised services provider, will help the endeavour by providing on-chain infrastructure and liquidity. 

The other connectors are Shift4 Payments, Swapper Finance, and XSwap, which uses Uniswap (UNI) for a decentralised app experience.

Mastercard’s payment network spans more than 200 countries worldwide. As it expands into the digital asset industry, the corporation has forged a number of high-profile collaborations with cryptocurrency platforms.

Stablecoins are one of the primary sectors where Mastercard has made a significant foray through partnerships. The startup has partnered with MetaMask, OKX, Crypto.com, and Kraken, among others, to provide stablecoin payments to millions of merchants. 

“There’s no denying it: people want to be able to easily connect to the digital assets ecosystem and vice versa.” That is why we will continue to use our proven expertise and global payments network to bridge the gap between on-chain commerce and off-chain transactions,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard.

According to Dhamodharan, the collaboration with Chainlink aims to promote digital asset usage in on-chain trade.

This collaboration is the next milestone for Chainlink, a decentralised oracle network that has established itself as a key infrastructure provider for DeFi, banking, and tokenised real-world assets. Chainlink’s other collaborations include major financial companies like Swift, Fidelity International, UBS, Euroclear, and ANZ. 

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