Binance and Mastercard have teamed up for a prepaid crypto rewards card in Brazil. The new card will allow new and existing Binance members to make everyday purchases with cryptocurrency.
Cardholders will be able to pay with 14 different currencies, including $BTC, $ETH, $BNB, $SOL, $SHIB, $MATIC, and the Brazilian real (BRL). When the card is used, funds are converted from crypto to fiat in real-time at the point of purchase. All payments with BRL have zero-fees, and crypto payments are subject to a 0.9% conversion fee.
Mastercard’s network of over 90 million merchants will accept the card, which comes with perks like zero fees for ATM withdrawals and an 8% cashbook in crypto on eligible purchases. The card was first rolled out in Argentina last year and will become available to Binance users in Brazil over the next couple of weeks.
Guilherme Nazar, the general manager at Binance for Brazil, said that the country was a critical market for Binance and that they were committed to the developments “of the blockchain and crypto ecosystems” within Brazil. Mastercard’s country manager for Brazil, Marcelo Tangioni, added that Brazilians want to “embrace crypto beyond an investment asset.”
Last year, Brazil made news when congress passed a bill to give crypto payments legal status — although the assets are still not legal tender in the country.
Mastercard not only has plans to increase the number of crypto supported by the card, but to expand card access to more markets around the world.
Mastercard Has Been Busy in Web3
For folks paying attention to Web3 news, it might not come as a surprise that Mastercard is expanding its crypto services. The second-largest payment processing corporation worldwide has made several moves in Web3 recently. Here are some of the top stories.
First, on June 9th 2022, Mastercard announced it had partnered with seven of the top NFT and metaverse platforms, including Immutable X, The Sandbox, Mintable, Nifty Gateway, and MoonPay. Now customers visiting these platforms can use Mastercard debit or credit card to make purchases.
Next, four months ago, Mastercard partnered with European crypto exchange “hi” to drop customizable NFT debit cards. The NFT debit cards are available to Gold members on the hi platform and will let users who hold blue chip NFTs add the avatar artwork to their cards.
Finally, just last month, Mastercard announced it was launching a Web3 music incubator with the help of Polygon. The music incubator will take five people in the music industry and help them navigate Web3 to forge their own paths forward.
Time will tell if Mastercard and Binance’s crypto rewards card is popular with users in Brasil. If it is, we expect it will be rolled out to other countries around the world in the future.