MasterCard Goes All-in on Bitcoin
JUST IN: Mastercard brings Bitcoin to 1B+ users & 100M merchants worldwide🔥
Hey, it’s Marc.
MasterCard just announced a non-custodial Bitcoin debit card. This is huge 🤯
What you need to know:
The card is a euro-denominated crypto debit card launched together with Mercuryo.
Users can spend Bitcoin from self-custodial wallets at 100M+ merchants globally
This is a massive step for Mastercard, building on a pilot with MetaMask
This legitimzes Bitcoin as an every-day currency beyond a store of value.
Even more important:
Direct spending: Just like using a regular debit card. No need to convert to fiat first.
Seamless: The card is compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Full control: Users retain full control of their crypto assets in their self-custodial wallets.
Previously users had to:
Transfer crypto from a self-custodial wallet to a centralized exchange.
Sell the crypto for fiat currency.
Transfer the fiat currency to a traditional bank account or debit card.
Finally, making the purchase using the fiat currency.
All this is reduced to one step. 🤯
The catch: the fees
– €1.6 issuance fee
– €1 monthly maintenance fee
– 0.95% per transaction
This is a big step for Mastercard.
And an ever bigger one for crypto adoption.
Are stablecoins next? 🤔
That’s it for now.
– Marc
Seeing a financial institution recognize the user's case for making purchases without converting is comforting. It legitimizes the "Godfather" of crypto. In other news, I've seen more and more Bitcoin ATM machines throughout the US, yet I have yet to read an article on this growth and awareness.