Mastercard teams up with Bakkt to bring crypto to the mainstream 😮; eNaira, Africa’s first digital currency, is now live in Nigeria🇳🇬; PayPal is not Pinterested anymore 🤷‍♂️

Good Morning FinTech, 26 October

Good day Everyone,

And happy Tuesday! I hope you’ve started off your week great (you definitely have if you’re subscribed to this newsletter 😎). To make your start of the week even better, here’s a mix of 3 great FinTech stories you cannot miss today:

Mastercard teams up with Bakkt to bring crypto to the mainstream 😮

The partnership 🤝 Card network behemoth Mastercard and digital asset platform Bakkt have just announced they are partnering up to allow merchants and banks to build cryptocurrency into their offerings. The two plan to also shake up the way consumers can collect loyalty rewards.

The WHY of the deal 👉 The aim of the initiative is to reportedly offer “quick access to cryptocurrency capabilities”. This effectively means that with the help of Bakkt, Mastercard’s partners – that includes banks, merchants, and FinTechs – will be able to roll out crypto investment tools for their users through custodial wallets. They will also be given a route to issuing branded crypto debit and credit cards.

More interestingly, Mastercard also plans to integrate crypto into its loyalty products, meaning rewards points can be spent in crypto rather than loyalty points.