Mastercard made the official announcement on October 17, 2022, regarding a new program for enabling financial institutions to bring cryptocurrency trading abilities and services to their customers, as reported by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, called as “Crypto Source,” the program aims to permit users buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies, combined with Mastercard’s proprietary Crypto Secure solution for additional security and compliance. The tool will be launched in collaboration with Mastercard’s current partner Paxos Trust company, and is reportedly expected to be unveiled in Q4, 2022. Paxos is familiar for providing similar service to global payments company PayPal, which launched its debut cryptocurrency services in late 2020. Through the new partnership, Paxos will provide cryptocurrency asset trading and custody services on behalf of banks, while Mastercard will deploy its technology to integrate cryptocurrency trading into banks’ interfaces.
On the basis of information by Cointelegraph, Ajay Bhalla, president, Mastercard’s cyber and intelligence unit, stated the company’s rising cryptocurrency expertise and commitment to the market, by mentioning its cryptocurrency-oriented investments. Mastercard made reference to the 2022 Mastercard New Payments Index by reporting that 29% of respondents globally hold cryptocurrency as an investment, while another 65% of respondents reportedly indicated a preference for cryptocurrency services to be deployed by their current financial institution. Walter Hessert, head of strategy, Paxos, emphasised on the scale of Mastercard’s global network of financial institutions.
“As regulation comes in, there is going to be a higher degree of security available to the crypto platforms, and we’ll see a lot of the current issues getting resolved in the quarters in the years to come,” Lambert reportedly stated.
Moreover, Cointelegraph noted that Mastercard has been reportedly working towards various cryptocurrency and blockchain-related initiatives in recent years. In January, 2022, Mastercard entered into a partnership with the Coinbase exchange to permit its non-fungible token (NFT) users for making purchases using Mastercard’s cards.
(With insights from Cointelegraph)
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