Mastercard adds secure on-chain access to crypto
Mastercard and Chainlink are teaming up to power Swapper Finance, a new way to buy crypto directly from decentralized exchanges (DEXs) using any Mastercard.
Holders of Mastercard’s 3.5 billion cards around the world will now be able to directly purchase crypto on Uniswap, through instant and secure crypto-to-fiat conversion, intrinsically connecting DeFi and the financial mainstream.
Swapper is powered by XSwap, an DEX built out of the Chainlink ecosystem. Swapper uses the Chainlink standard for data and interoperability, via an integration between zerohash and Shift4 Payments, and is backed by Mastercard’s global payment rails and fraud protection.
These partnerships with leading infrastructure providers allow secure tokens to be purchased on DEXs using the next generation app and user interface of Swapper Finance. Mastercard and Chainlink will explore future use cases for on-chain commerce.
Why it matters
Buying crypto on-chain has historically been complicated by wallet setup, on-ramp limitations, network complexity, and user interface challenges. These obstacles have limited broader participation in the crypto economy.
Swapper changes that. It’s the first time a major payments network has enabled direct-to-DEX swaps at scale. Integrating with leading infrastructure providers delivers a secure and regulated experience.
Then zerohash handles core compliance, custody and transaction infrastructure, making it possible to convert fiat into crypto for smart contact consumption in a regulated manner.
Shift4 enables seamless card processing, while XSwap sources liquidity from DEXs. Together, these technologies create a unified, compliant, and intuitive user experience that brings crypto access directly to the payments mainstream.
How it works
A user initiates a crypto purchase on Swapper Finance, or any web app that has integrated Swapper’s widget. Shift4 submits the payment request to the card network (Mastercard) for authorization and processes real-time fiat-to-crypto conversion upon approval. zerohash delivers the intermediary crypto token – such as a stablecoin – from the fiat conversion to Swapper smart contracts.
Chainlink validates the purchase metadata against the user’s original request, then transmits DEX order instructions to Swapper’s smart contracts in a decentralized manner. Swapper smart contracts securely execute a token swap on a DEX, such as the Uniswap protocol, with the order instructions from Chainlink. The user receives the desired token in their wallet – fast, securely, and fully on-chain.
“This is what crypto looks like when it’s ready for the real world,” said Raj Dhamodharan, EVP, Blockchain & Digital Assets at Mastercard. “In coming together with Chainlink, we’re at the start of a very exciting journey to truly revolutionize the way we use cards for on-chain finance. Bringing our proven expertise and global payments network together with Chainlink and other industry leaders, we’re meaningfully accelerating the broader adoption of digital assets at scale – enabling billions of people to participate in the crypto economy with the cards in their wallets today.”
“This is the type of traditional finance and decentralized finance convergence that Chainlink was built to make possible,” said Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink. “I’m excited about Chainlink’s ability to enable this critical connection between the traditional payments world and more than 3.5 billion Mastercard cardholders, directly into the next generation trading environments of on-chain decentralized exchanges. It has been great collaborating closely with the Mastercard team on this innovative implementation, as well as the teams at Swapper Finance, Shift4, zerohash. This was a complex and multilayered collaboration, which I was thrilled to see the Chainlink community help make possible.”