Mastercard Launches New Program Connecting Digital Assets and Banks

• Mastercard launches a program to involve financial institutions in crypto trading.
• The company would act as a bridge between Paxos and banks.
• The card would handle regulatory compliance and security issues of digital transactions.

Mastercard is reportedly planning to launch a new program for involving financial institutions in crypto trading and thereby bring crypto more easily to the public.

In detail, Mastercard will soon launch a new program that would allow the company to connect between financial institutions and crypto platforms. Consequently, Mastercard would act as a “bridge” between Paxos, a crypto trading company that was already is already linked to Paypal and banks.

Notably, banks avoid transactions using digital assets mainly because of two reasons: regulatory compliance and security. Being a link between the financial firms and the crypto industry, Mastercard would handle both these aspects of the transaction.

Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s Head of Crypto, in the company’s official news release, commented that digital assets have the potential to transform the financial system’s infrastructure.

He added that the potential of the digital assets could be unlocked and the long-anticipated digital transactions could be put into reality by bringing the “best of tech, banking, fintech, and crypto”:

To unlock that potential, we need to bring together the best of tech, banking, fintech, and crypto. This will create a variety of new services and make the movement of money speedier, simpler, and cheaper. The long-sought promise of making crypto a payment tool could be achieved.

Though the initiative by Mastercard could be beneficial in both the fiat and crypto space, certain issues like the volatility of the cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin stand as a threat to the new venture.