Summary:
- Payments giant Mastercard plans to bring cryptocurrency trading to traditional finance customers via their banks.
- The company announced a pilot program on Monday, per CNBC’s report. Mastercard will offer its services as a bridge between banks and Paxos, a crypto broker tapped by PayPal.
- Chief digital officer Jorn Lambert opined that crypto should embrace the financial industry if digital assets hope to go mainstream.
Mastercard unveiled a pilot program to power Bitcoin and crypto trading for traditional banking customers in a move that could onboard millions of investors and users via their preferred mainstream financial institution, per CNBC’s report on Monday.
According to the payment giant’s chief digital officer Jorn Lambert, bank users show a significant demand for crypto assets and trading. However, customers are also skeptical of the burgeoning crypto industry and would rather interact with virtual currencies via their banks.
There’s a lot of consumers out there that are really interested in this, and intrigued by crypto, but would feel a lot more confident if those services were offered by their financial institutions. It’s a little scary to some people still.
Mastercard has teamed up with crypto broker Paxos through the pilot program to kit banks with crypto trading facilities and mitigate concerns starting in Q1 2023. Up till press time, traditional banks have supposedly shunned crypto assets on the basis of security risks and regulatory compliance.
The payment heavyweight will serve as a bridge between crypto and TradFi institutions by covering these two crucial areas.
Mastercard Pilot Program Could Bring Millions Into Crypto
Indeed, millions of everyday users could tap crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) if their banks begin offering digital asset trading. Major industry stakeholders like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have refrained from directly dealing in crypto despite boasting dedicated digital asset departments.
While banks have mostly shunned the asset class, payment services like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, have tapped opportunities in the crypto industry. PayPal and Paxos have an existing partnership similar to Monday’s pilot program.
Mastercard also has a deal with major crypto exchange Coinbase for fiat payments on its NFT marketplace.
Although crypto’s technology was built to disrupt traditional finance, Lambert opined that the industry should consider “embracing the financial industry as we know it” if digital assets plan to “truly go mainstream”.
