Mastercard has teamed up with blockchain infrastructure firm Paxos to create a programme designed to facilitate crypto services to its customers.
The Mastercard Crypto Source programme is aiming to provide banks and fintechs with a solution that will allow them to offer a service that allows their customers to buy, hold and sell crypto assets.
The crypto service will be built upon an augmented identity system which will look to implement security and advisory services when customers are engaging in crypto trading.
Under the terms of the partnership, Paxos will provide crypto asset trading and custody services to banks, whilst Mastercard will implement its technology to the merchants’ banks interfaces.
“What we are announcing today is a connected approach to services that will help bring users safely and securely into the crypto ecosystem,” said Ajay Bhalla, President of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard.
“Our recent investments in this space, such as the acquisition of CipherTrace and Ekata, are providing us with a unique set of capabilities to help provide our customers and consumers with the most technically advanced solutions available in the market.”
During a Mastercard survey, the card giant found that 29% of respondents own a form of cryptocurrency as an investment, with a further 65% stating they would prefer crypto-related services to be provided by their chosen bank or financial institution.
The aforementioned CipherTrace will integrate its technology to Mastercard’s recently launched crypto security service, ‘Crypto Secure’.
The service aims to make purchasing and holding crypto as secure as possible, as Bhalla admitted the digital asset market is now a “pretty large, substantial market” that Mastercard cannot ignore.
He told CNBC several weeks back: “This idea is that the kind of trust we provide for digital commerce transactions, we want to be able to provide the same kind of trust to digital asset transactions for consumers, banks and merchants.”
