Mastercard bridges crypto and traditional finance with non-custodial Bitcoin debit card 🪙💳; FinTech M&A is back: Paylocity makes a move into spend management with $325M Airbase acquisition 🤝💸

FinTech is Eating the World, 5 September

Hey Everyone,

Happy Thursday & greetings from never sleeping Istambul 🇹🇷! Today’s issue is the best one yet as we’re going to look at Mastercard which is aiming to bridge crypto and TradFi with a non-custodial Bitcoin debit card (what’s the USP here & why it matters + some bonus deep dives inside), and FinTech M&A that is back again as Paylocity just made a bold move into spend management with Airbase acquisition (why it’s a good move that makes brilliant sense & how will it change the future intersection of all things HR + FinTech). So let’s just jump straight into the amazing stuff 🌶️

Mastercard bridges crypto and traditional finance with non-custodial Bitcoin debit card 🪙💳

The launch 🚀 In a bid to bridge the worlds of cryptocurrency and traditional finance, payments titan Mastercard MA 0.00%↑ has just launched a euro-denominated debit card that allows users to spend Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies directly from their non-custodial wallets.

Developed in partnership with crypto payment providers like Mercuryo, it enables Bitcoin holders to make purchases at over 100 million Mastercard merchants globally without first converting their crypto to fiat currency.

Let’s take a quick look at this and see why it matters.