A payment card to spend your crypto-currencies anywhere in the world, and at most merchants. This is a concept that appeals to Visa and Mastercard card issuers. For two years, the two companies have been seeking to partner with cryptocurrency exchange platforms that manage several million crypto wallets, in order to equip them with a payment card.
This week, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach announced that he is working with Binance to soon provide a compatible payment card to more than 90 million merchants around the world. For him, crypto-currencies are an excellent way forward and the blockchain industry will already reach a certain maturity within 5 years maximum. As a result, international registry systems like SWIFT will no longer exist by 2027.
Mastercard has already worked on cryptocurrency payment cards with other platforms and is now taking on Binance. As with neobanks, Mastercard is at war with Visa. The two issuers regularly alternate positions with the partner companies. Currently, Visa already offers a payment card to Binance. It’s hard to say if the current work between Mastercard and Binance will have the effect of driving Visa away from the crypto platform.
Crypto payments without crypto
In France, Ledger is also working on a payment card for its customers and their physical crypto wallet. The equipment is experiencing a bit of a delay while card issuers must not put the French nugget in their priority in view of the number of customers much lower than that of platforms like Binance, Coinbase, FTX or Crypto.com.
Importantly, these so-called “crypto” cards do not pay merchants in a digital currency. In fact, Visa and Mastercard are developing cards that, during each transaction, convert the amount requested by the merchant into fiat currency. The cryptocurrencies stored on the customer’s crypto wallet are converted into Euro or another fiat currency, so that it can be accepted by the merchant.
The big advantage of crypto cards is that of the ceilings, which are much higher than with a traditional bank. On the other hand, the exchange between cryptocurrency and fiat currency is important to take into account from a tax point of view. As a reminder, you are taxed on your capital gains in crypto-currencies only if you convert them into fiat currency. An important point to take into consideration.
Also note that the current Binance Visa card, available to French customers, does not take Bitcoin payments into account. To be able to use the card on a payment terminal, you must use a wallet containing BNB, BUSD, USDT, BTC, SXP, ETH, EUR, ADA, DOT, XRP, AVAX, SHIB, LAZIO, PORTO or SANTOS.