A wave of partnerships is making it easier for everyday credit card users to buy crypto on-chain, as well as spend crypto with bank cards.
On-chain platforms have been racing to bridge the gap between traditional payments and decentralized finance (DeFi) as crypto and credit card companies continue to team up.
On Tuesday, June 24, Mastercard and decentralized blockchain oracle network Chainlink announced a new partnership to allow Mastercard users to purchase cryptocurrencies directly on-chain. The service is expected to reach over 3 billion Mastercard cardholders, according to the official press release.
The on-chain service will be powered by infrastructure provider zerohash, formerly known as Seed CX – which raised $105 million in its latest Series D funding round in 2022, according to Pitchbook. Swapper Finance, Shift4 Payments, XSwap, and the Uniswap protocol are also supporting the integration.
“What Chainlink does in this is it allows Mastercard and the DEX — in this case, Uniswap — and all the other participants, to interoperate, effectively creating the necessary connectivity and coordination,” Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, explained to The Defiant at Permissionless IV in Brooklyn yesterday, just after the integration was announced:
“So it’s a really great partnership, and for me, showcases how these leading payments and technology companies like Mastercard will now be getting more and more of the traditional mainstream audience into the crypto world.”
Nazarov added that, to him, this is what mainstream adoption looks like: when the average person can simply use what they already have — like a credit card — to access and participate in DeFi and on-chain trading.
“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 decentralized exchanges,” Nazarov said in the release.
Moving Past Crypto Cards
The Mastercard and Chainlink integration reflects a broader push to integrate fiat and TradFi with DeFi, in this case focusing on making it easier for more people to on-ramp and participate in web3.
Historically, however, the integration has gone in the other direction — letting crypto holders easily spend their digital assets as fiat, via a crypto-funded debit or credit card.
In a recent such integration, Mastercard announced a partnership with top centralized crypto exchange Kraken to bring crypto debit cards to residents in the UK and Europe.
As of March 2025, the credit card company boasts $48.47 billion in total assets, a 13.77% increase year-over-year, according to Macrotrends.
At the time, Kraken co-CEO David Ripley said: “Crypto is transforming the payments industry, and we envision a future where global commerce and everyday payments are powered by crypto assets.”
Two weeks ago, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced plans to launch its new Coinbase One Card later this year, in partnership with American Express. The card will offer up to 4% back in Bitcoin on purchases. Meanwhile, the Gemini Credit Credit — another Mastercard partnership — was launched as early as 2021.
The convergence between crypto and traditional payments comes as legislators increasingly embrace digital assets and push for clearer regulations for the crypto sector. Most recently, the United States Senate passed the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act in a 68–30 vote. The legislation allows both banks and non-banks to issue stablecoins, which currently boast a market cap of nearly $253 billion, according to DeFiLlama.
