Unbanked and Mastercard Partner on Crypto Card Issuance in Europe

Unbanked and Mastercard have partnered to accelerate decentralized finance (DeFi) card issuance in Europe.

Through this partnership, the two companies will use their existing footprint in the United Kingdom and the continent to work with Web3 organizations to enable the issuance of cryptocurrency-powered card programs, the companies said in a Thursday (Feb. 2) press release.

“At Mastercard, we believe in offering choice to consumers and businesses on how they want to pay and be paid,” Christian Rau, senior vice president FinTech and crypto enablement for Mastercard Europe, said in the release. “This initiative with Unbanked is testament to that as we work to accelerate the issuance of crypto cards and empower choice in the market, knowing that it comes with the safety, security and protections they would expect from our network.”

With the Unbanked and Mastercard partnership, the Litecoin Card — which has been available to residents of the United States for two years — will be made available to residents in the U.K. and Europe.

Unbanked, which provides white-label crypto card issuance and program management service for Web3 companies, has worked with the Litecoin Foundation to offer the Litecoin Card to residents of the U.S.

“I am thrilled to be working with Mastercard to open crypto card programs in the U.K., Europe and abroad,” Unbanked Co-Founder and Co-CEO Ian Kane said in the release. “Mastercard has been very forward-thinking when it comes to digital.”

The announcement of this partnership comes about two months after Unbanked expanded its cryptocurrency card program to the U.K. and parts of Europe in partnership with London-based payments company Moorwand.

With the Unbanked Card, users can fund their account with 15 different cryptocurrencies and, when they want to spend their assets, simply use the card like any other debit card — with Unbanked facilitating real-time conversion to the necessary fiat currency.

Other players in the European crypto card space include major crypto exchanges, with Binance, Crypto.com, Coinbase and Gemini having launched similar propositions.

For its part, Mastercard has moved into the business of providing the back-end tools and support to let financial institutions offer retail customers white-label crypto trading and custody services.

In a recent survey, the card payments giant found that 60% of consumers were interested in seeing their bank offer crypto services.