Mastercard Teams With Crypto Exchange BTC Markets

Mastercard has formed a partnership with Australia’s largest cryptocurrency exchange to allow users to make payments into the exchange, FX Empire reported.

The partnership will let customers make direct debit, prepaid and credit card payments in BTC Markets, which previously only allowed users to make payments via bank transfer.

“As the cryptocurrency landscape continues to grow and evolve, customers are increasingly looking for faster and simpler ways to access cryptocurrency securely and efficiently,” said BTC Markets CEO Caroline Bowler, per the report. “We are excited to be partnering with Mastercard who share our focus on stability and innovation and customer protection, and enable us to offer our clients with new ways to engage with this emerging digital asset class.”

The partnership lets users automatically convert cryptocurrency into fiat, and then spend that money anywhere Mastercard is accepted. It comes weeks after Mastercard announced it was working with Coinbase to allow users to make purchases on the Coinbase NFT marketplace.

Read more: Mastercard, Coinbase Make It Easier to Buy NFTs

The rise of regulations governing cryptocurrency may hamper efforts by Mastercard and other companies like it to break into the crypto world. The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), for example, is proposing to apply the same financial promotion rules to crypto assets as to other high‑risk investments, a category known as “Restricted Mass Market Investments.”

See more: Crypto Promotions in the UK Will Be Harder To Get Approved

For now, crypto promotions in the U.K., are only supervised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which doesn’t have the same powers as the FCA and subjects companies to less stringent rules.

All the same, the ASA has spent the last year banning crypto ads, flagging advertisements from Crypto.com, eToro and Coinbase, saying they were misleading.

It also published an enforcement notice for cryptocurrencies saying that this is a priority issue for the regulator and urging businesses comply with its guidelines.