Mastercard is helping its partners convert money to fiat currency more efficiently with digital cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges by streamlining the process. The company plans on piloting this new feature in partnership with Circle, Paxos Trust Company, and Evolve Bank &Trust following a Tuesday announcement (July 20).
The credit card networks are ramping up their crypto offerings to catch the attention of consumers. Visa announced this month they had processed a billion dollars in just six months on its network through US dollar transactions, and now Mastercard is enhancing its own cards for cryptocurrency buyers.
Neither company made any mention about how much money was flowing into cryptocurrencies instead of traditional payment systems, but it's likely that increased interest from retailers will only help drive more spending as Bitcoin becomes accepted at an increasing number of merchants around the world - including some major U.S.-based ones like Microsoft who started accepting BTC back in 2014 with limited success; Starbucks has been testing out bitcoin payments since 2016 without offering them to all customers.
Circle and Paxos will team up to create a new type of currency that would be stable when compared with volatile cryptocurrencies. The two companies announced their partnership recently, which is being called the “Clover program”.
They plan to make it easier for banks and crypto partners like Circle Pay or Coinbase Wallet users to purchase cash-backed digital currencies in order provide consumers with more freedom over how they buy goods, pay taxes and take care of other transactions without having worry about market fluctuations happening all too often nowadays within financial circles such as bitcoin's recent price plummeting due to Google banning cryptocurrency adverts from its search engine.
On the similar lines, Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products & partnerships at Mastercard quoted that,
Today not all crypto companies have the foundational infrastructure to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency, and we’re making it easier.
Furthermore, he added which companies are playing pivotal role in making this idea reality,
Through our engagement with Evolve, Paxos, Circle and the larger digital assets community, Mastercard expects to deliver on our promise of consumer choice to provide options to people around the world on how and when to pay.
The company is in talks with three banks including Metropolitan Commercial Bank and Evolve Banks and Trust to provide services. They are also negotiating partnerships with BitPay, Uphold, i2c Inc., Galileo Financial Technologies for processing or program management.
The Mastercard Company announced that they were looking into partnering up with a few banks as well as the payment processors such as Bitpay by developing co-branded cards. These new features would allow customers to have an easy way of buying Bitcoin just like any other form of currency but at lower rates than usual on credit card purchases over time based off their monthly income range which could be set beforehand before applying for this type of account service from one's bank branch locally or through online banking channels depending where you are applying.
Digital currency is revolutionizing the world, and it only seems like things are going to get bigger in 2021. All kinds of individuals have thoughts about digital money; for example one might want their business's profits paid out in cash instead of bitcoin while another individual would be content with just selling his or her house bitcoins as a form of payment rather than traditional currencies.
To conclude, this initiative by Mastercard will open different avenue for individual to spend their crypto assets.
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