Mastercard is deepening its involvement with cryptocurrency by offering customers loyalty rewards of the digital currency in partnership with mobile payment app Swoo Pay.
The initial offering will be rolled out to emerging crypto regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa in an attempt to service those markets that have largely been underserved by similar offerings by the likes of Google Pay who don’t typically provide access to these regions.
The cryptocurrency of choice for the rewards program are Swoo tokens, the native digital currency of Swoo Pay, and can be converted to Bitcoin or USDC. The launch pilot of the currency enabled 17,000 participants to receive a 5% crypto cashback.
Flipp Shubin, Swoo Pay Co-Founder, said: “In many emerging countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines and Indonesia, there are billions of users who have Mastercard and Visa cards, but don’t have access to Google Pay.
“This also includes connecting users in countries with a high concentration of affordable Huawei smartphones.
“Another problem concerns countries with big market share of Huawei smartphones, since due sanctions from the US government, there are no Google services on top of these phones.”
The payments giant has long been developing and interacting with crypto, blockchain and Web3 functions over the last several years, establishing a new common standards infrastructure last year to elevate trust in the sector.
The Mastercard Crypto Credential platform aims to ‘provide a foundation for financial institutions, governments, brands, and crypto players, ensuring that those interested in interacting across Web3 environments are meeting defined standards for the types of activities they’d like to pursue’.
Mastercard has also been at the forefront of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) exploration, unearthing new use cases for the potential digital currency to become a reality by enlisting companies such as Ripple and Fireblocks to collaborate with.
The partnership between the payment company and Swoo Pay is the latest in Mastercard’s attempts to diversify its product range of payment capabilities in key markets.
Denis Filippov, Country Manager of Mastercard, stated: “Swoo Pay solves issues with tokenized payments for Android device users, making them more accessible, and our collaboration is designed to provide additional innovative incentives for Swoo users in making everyday purchases.”
