“Creating and scaling trusted ecosystems to enable commerce is nothing new for Mastercard,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products and partnerships, in a blog post on Friday. We have been pioneers in the fields of identity verification and worldwide payment standards for many years, and we want to continue to be so as we work with the government and other businesses to advance the industry.
The initial use case analysis of the Mastercard Crypto Credential will concentrate on determining how well it can facilitate transactions between corridors in the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The news announcement states that the business has worked with Lirium, Bit2Me, Mercado Bitcoin, and Uphold on this venture.
Other fees will be implemented to better verify NFTs, business registration, and alternative payment methods. A news statement from Mastercard states that the company is working with Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, Polygon, and The Solano Foundation to make the initiative available to developers in those communities.
Mastercard’s executive vice president of product and engineering for Latin America and the Caribbean, Walter Pimenta, said in a press release that the region is one of the world’s leaders in digital asset adoption and remittances using digital assets as a means of value exchange. “Mastercard Crypto Credential could assist in addressing key obstacles that have historically impeded widespread adoption of [these] use cases, thereby encouraging more industry players to enter this space in a meaningful way,” the company said.
Dhamodharan, a Mastercard executive, said in an October interview that crypto services offered by banks piqued the interest of 60% of users. To paraphrase what Dhamodharan said at the time: “Cryptocurrency is entering a phase of maturity where more consumers are interested in investing in it as an asset class.”