Binance and Mastercard to enable users to make purchases using #cryptocurrency.
Argentina will be the pilot, but Binance users through the application will be able to access the service. Eventually the service could be launched across the globe.
The merchants using Mastercard terminals, all 90 million of them worldwide, would be able to accept the payments converted into fiat currency in real time. Users may even get crypto cashbacks.
I agree that there is a major shift in how money is defined, stored and transfered. Having said that cryptocurrencies are not seen as means to buy things, they are still looked on as an asset class. The infrastructure needed for mass adoption is still few years away, both domestic and international payments.
Cards payments command a major chunk of market share in payments, but they have been declining(growing very slow) for a while anyways due to better payments infrastructure like domestic instant payments and wallets. Countries like India and China are leading the way.
So crypto or token based payments are not just competing with card networks but also with traditional central bank(or under their oversight) payments infrastructure.
Visa and MC are probably not ready for it, but they have seen world ending events every few years, and they have adapted, coming out stronger, either through acquisitions or innovation.
There have been crypto cards in the past, the potential global scale though is different, one of the largest crypto exchange/wallet provider and one of the largest retail payments network in the world.
Visa has been very active in this approach as well; crypto cards with Crypto.com and Binance were launched earlier this year.
Even though this probably is not the end game, it will still radically impact the adoption of decentralized currencies.
Interoperability between unregulated and fiat currencies are critical for the financial ecosystems to develop inclusive of the new world order.
Though cryptocurrencies (at least the prominent ones) are mostly perceived as an “asset class”, payments is a critical use case.
I believe the end game sounds exciting and anarchist at the same time; a world dominated with decentralized currencies !