Mastercard Enhances Crypto Wallet and Exchange Business

Payment giant Mastercard announced Tuesday to enhance its function and experience for cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges to their clients. The card issuer cooperates with multiple crypto enterprises to make conversion of crypto and traditional fiat money easier.

In a statement, Mastercard reveals its ambition of enhancement to the existing crypto card program with multiple partners. The card issuer considers Evolve Bank & Trust and Metropolitan Commercial Bank to issue cards, Uphold and BitPay to provide real-time crypto wallet technology, i2c Inc., Apto Payments and Galileo Financial Technologies to support processing and program management.

Meanwhile, Paxos and Circle will use their platforms to convert crypto to fiat through fiat-backed stablecoins, a class of cryptocurrency that offers price stability and is backed by reserve assets.

Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products & partnerships at Mastercard, welcomed the partnership and said:

“Not all crypto companies have the foundational infrastructure to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency and we’re making it easier…Mastercard expects to deliver on our the promise of consumer choice to provide options to people around the world on how and when to pay,”

This is “a critical step in expanding the ecosystem and safely, securely and compliantly setting the stage for the future of crypto payments,” the statement added. 

Mastercard understands the growing demand for digital payment from its customers. More than 93% of clients considered adopting innovative payment methods, such as biometrics, digital currencies, and QR codes. Therefore, the payment platform has announced in February to support direct crypto payments by allowing cardholders to transact crypto on its network this year directly. 

Meanwhile, Visa, one of the major competitors to Mastercard, their visa cardholders has spent more than $1 billion worth of crypto in the first six months this year by consumers globally. Recently, Visa expanded its business in Australia by approving an Australian startup CryptoSpend to issue debit cards for its customers to consume through cryptocurrencies.