Mastercard Ramps Up Efforts In Blockchain Space

Global payment Mastercard announced on Friday its plan to establish an infrastructure to better verify blockchain transactions in partnership with four prominent industry names: Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, Polygon, and the Solana Foundation.

The bold move came amid the growing crypto regulations.

The new offering, Mastercard Crypto Credential, aims to set verification standards and offer the necessary technology for various use cases across the sector.

In a blog post on the company’s website, Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s head of crypto and blockchain, explained the reason behind the effort, saying that they need a way to ensure interactions on public blockchain networks are trustworthy, compliant, and verifiable to fully implement rules and build scalable use cases.

Mastercard Moves Further Into Crypto

Mastercard also outlined the significant difference between levels of authentication across crypto products, for example, NFT and crypto wallets, calling for the need to create a new offering.

Mastercard Crypto Credential would provide straightforward aliases to assist consumers in more easily sharing wallet addresses and use metadata to define wallet attributes to ensure only intended transactions are completed.

CipherTrace, a crypto intelligence firm that Mastercard acquired in 2021, will help verify addresses and support compliance with cross-border transaction regulations. Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, Polygon, and the Solana Foundation will help bring Mastercard’s new offering to application developers.

Six fintech companies were also added to Mastercard’s Start Path Digital Assets program, designed to provide startups with access to the payment giant’s channels and customers and technical collaboration.

Ramp Up In Web3 Innovation

Mastercard has long emerged in crypto, especially in Web3 and NFT. Earlier in 2022, the company announced its strategic partnership with Coinbase to enable NFT purchases on the Coinbase NFT marketplace with a Mastercard.

The payment giant has also advanced its foray into non-fungible tokens and developing web mechanisms through partnerships with several prominent NFT marketplaces, including Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and the web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay.

The goal of Mastercard, through those partnerships, is to elevate its presence in the Web3 space and allow more users to buy NFTs directly from their payment cards instead of having to purchase cryptocurrency first.

Blockchain technology remains the company’s focus, and Mastercard aims to apply that technology to help solve today’s complex problems and build efficient systems.

Mastercard is one of many major payment companies that expressed interest in the sector. Over the past few years, numerous companies have begun to explore ways to integrate cryptocurrencies into their offerings as they see it as the next big thing in finance.

Massive Future in Payments

Payment card companies have announced numerous partnerships with crypto companies and established dedicated groups to explore the underlying technology.

However, recent turmoil in the space forced a slow down. The regulatory environment in the US created a significant barrier. Typically, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been repeatedly targeting the crypto industry since the beginning of this year.

Visa and Mastercard have announced their plans to delay the launch of new partnerships with crypto firms. This decision follows a period of instability in the crypto industry, with major players such as FTX and BlockFi seeking bankruptcy protection.

These events have led to investor anxiety and increased regulatory scrutiny over the sector.

In light of these circumstances, both Visa and Mastercard have decided to defer the introduction of specific crypto-related products and services until market conditions and regulatory environment improve.

It is a significant setback for the crypto industry, which has been seeking mainstream adoption from traditional financial institutions.

Despite the setbacks, the crypto industry remains optimistic about its long-term prospects.

As more investors recognize the value of decentralized systems and blockchain technology, the industry is expected to grow in the coming years. Mastercard is taking a proactive approach to ensure the industry’s long-term success and pave the way for mainstream adoption.