Chainlink announced today a partnership with Mastercard, enabling more than 3 billion cardholders worldwide to purchase crypto assets directly on-chain through a secure fiat-to-crypto conversion. Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Mastercard, acknowledged that people are interested in easily connecting to the digital asset ecosystem and vice versa.
BREAKING: Chainlink and Mastercard partner to enable 3 billion cardholders to buy crypto directly on-chain.
— Cryptopolitan (@CPOfficialtx) June 24, 2025
The collaboration has been secured in close partnership with Zerohash, Swapper Finance, Shift4 Payments, and XSwap using the Uniswap protocol. Zerohash provides the on-chain service and necessary liquidity to convert fiat to crypto with seamless execution of smart contracts. Chainlink operates on a reliable interoperability infrastructure, while Mastercard is a trusted global payment network that combines to offer conventional users access to the on-chain economy.
The partnership is oriented towards the convergence of TradFi with the DeFi world
Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, stated that the partnership was a type of convergence between traditional finance and decentralized finance that Chainlink was designed to make possible. He was excited about Chainlink's ability to enable the critical connection between the conventional payment world and the more than three billion cardholders in Mastercard's user base in decentralized exchange environments.
Nazarov acknowledged that it was great to connect with the Mastercard team about the innovative implementation with Swapper Finance, XSwap, Shift4, and Zerohash. He added that it was a complex, multilayer collaboration, and he was excited to see Chainlink make it possible.
Raj Dhamodharan, Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Mastercard, noted that there was no doubt that people wanted to easily connect to the digital asset ecosystem. He added that Mastercard is leveraging its proven expertise and global payment network to bridge the gap between on-chain commerce and off-chain transactions. He revealed that the partnership with Chainlink unlocks a safe and innovative way to revolutionize on-chain commerce and foster wider adoption of crypto assets.
Zerohash will provide the core infrastructure for compliance, custody, and transaction to enable regulated fiat-to-crypto conversion. Shift4 will enable card processing, while XSwap will obtain liquidity from decentralized exchanges like the Uniswap protocol, supporting the final execution of on-chain exchanges. The collaboration of technologies creates a unified, compatible, and seamless user experience while providing access to crypto assets for payment cardholders.
During an informal talk at the Blokworks Digital Assets Summit in April, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov sat down with Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, to discuss the convergence of TradFi and DeFi through stablecoins and real-world assets.
Nazarov agreed that DeFi and TradFi will eventually converge by combining DeFi's superior distribution channel with the risk management and custody guarantees of TradFi. He added that the growing adoption of blockchain will ultimately eliminate the distinction between private and public chains. Young revealed that bringing institutions on-chain is an inevitable but long-term goal. He added that disappointment may arise with the speed at which the change will occur.
Collaboration helps drive user-centered solutions
Edward Woodford, CEO and co-founder of Zerohash, expressed his enthusiasm for Zerohash being the infrastructure partner alongside Chainlink and Mastercard on the Swapper Finance platform. He said that Zerohash is a flexible crypto and stablecoin infrastructure that powers compatible crypto-to-crypto exchanges. According to Woodford, the company provides simple access to decentralized exchanges through a smooth and compatible onboarding process, eliminating the complexities of smart contracts and low-latency on-chain transactions.
Drew Turchin, head of business development at Uniswap Labs, said that the Uniswap protocol has become the foundation for on-chain markets, allowing developers worldwide to create new tools for a wide range of users. He was excited to see Swapper Finance use the protocol and shared it as an example of how it continues to serve as critical infrastructure in the financial stack.
According to Chainlink, the collaboration helps drive a new wave of user-centered solutions that bridge the gap between native crypto technology and real-world usability. The Swapper Finance platform is already operational and available for users to conduct transactions.
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