Airswift and Cloud Payments have teamed to simplify cryptocurrency payments with Visa and Mastercard.
Airswift, a crypto payments provider, announced the partnership in a Thursday (Feb. 2) news release, saying it would “enable cryptocurrency spenders with instant access to crypto at the points-of-sale” using Visa and Mastercard payment.
The company says the partnership will provide crypto on-ramping and NFT purchasing using Visa and Mastercard with optimized exchange rates, giving crypto spenders increased convenience when seeking out retail goods and digital assets.
“Millions of Web2.0 consumers are ready to onboard to Web3.0, but are not familiar with existing Decentralized Finance (DeFi) on-ramps,” Airswift Co-founder and CEO Dr. Yan Zhang said in the release.
“So we’ve worked together to integrate Cloud Payments’ simple, credit-card based crypto purchasing tools into our easy-to-use crypto payment platform. This feature lets you seamlessly on-ramp to and spend crypto right at the checkout without ever leaving Airswift’s platform, thereby reducing friction for newcomers to the market.”
The company said the service will be rolled out first in North America and Europe.
The launch comes a little more than two months after Airswift unveiled Airswift Connect, a full-stack payment gateway for online businesses.
The gateway integrates with merchants’ online stores to enable them to accept cryptocurrency all over the world, the company said in November. It lets online merchants settle their digital currency assets to stablecoin or fiat daily, with lower transaction fees than they would face with credit card payments.
PYMNTS spoke with Airswift’s Zhang recently in a discussion with payment leaders who said that they see the cryptocurrency industry enjoying a much better outlook in 2023 than in 2022, at least when it comes to payments.
“The ultimate success of this industry shall come from the seamless integration of regulated FinTech infrastructure with decentralized systems,” Zhang said.
“It is critical to develop a decentralized payment protocol and integrate it with regulated payment service providers and money service operators,” he continued, adding that, ultimately, actors need to provide a crypto service that people can use easily.
As more mainstream financial institutions incorporate cryptocurrency into their offerings for retail and institutional clients, observers hope that the promise of crypto and blockchain to provide cheaper, faster and safer domestic and cross-border payment solutions may finally begin to be fully realized, PYMNTS wrote.
“2023 will be the year of rebuilding,” said Zhang. “Specifically, crypto’s integration with real lives will drive growth.”
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