Mastercard’s Tool Will Provide Banks with Cryptocurrency Trading
By Sidney C. | 10-31-2022
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Global payment giant Mastercard has created a new tool that enables banks to trade cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, as part of its ongoing attempts to encourage the adoption of cryptocurrencies. On October 17, the company formally unveiled a new program to let financial institutions provide their customers with this ability. With the Crypto Source program, clients can now buy, hold, and sell crypto. On top of that, the program will include Mastercard's proprietary Crypto Secure technology cryptocurrencies for improved security and compliance.
The tool was developed in collaboration with Mastercard's current partner, Paxos Trust Company, and it should be published in late 2022. If you haven’t heard of Paxos yet, you should know that people call it the PayPal of crypto due to their similarities.
IThe latest crypto initiative from Mastercard comes as the overall market valuation of cryptocurrencies has decreased by over 50% since the start of 2022. So it’s no wonder that some people are concerned with how successful this project will be.
“It would be shortsighted to think that a little bit of a crypto winter heralds the end of it” said Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s Chief Digital Officer. He continued, “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”.
Bear Market Concerns
While enabling banks to offer crypto trading is no small feat, it’s just another move in a long line of Mastercard’s contributions to the crypto space. And while the current bear market economy might have some concerned with how successful this project will be, Mastercard’s Chief Digital Officer is a firm believer in the future of cryptocurrency.
In conclusion
IIn the past few years, Mastercard has been actively working on a variety of projects relating to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. For example, to enable Coinbase NFT customers to make transactions using Mastercard's cards, the two companies announced their partnership earlier this year.
Additionally, the ability to buy, sell, and hold digital assets using custodial wallets was made available to its US clients. This feature was released in late 2021 through a partnership with the digital asset company Bakkt.
Mastercard’s Contribution to Crypto
In this new partnership, Paxos will handle custody and trading of crypto assets on behalf of the banks. Mastercard, on the other hand, will use its technology to incorporate crypto trading into the user interfaces of banks.
The President of Mastercard's Cyber & Intelligence, Ajay Bhalla, highlighted the firm's expanding knowledge of and commitment to the crypto market. This is even more convincing if we consider that the digital identification platform Ekata and the crypto intelligence platform CipherTrace were acquired by Mastercard last year.
The 2022 Mastercard New Payments Index report states: “29% of respondents globally hold cryptocurrency as an investment, with another 65% indicating a preference for crypto-related services to be provided by their current trusted financial institution”.
Mastercard and Paxos Join Forces
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