Mastercard To Help Banks Facilitate Crypto Trading For Customers

Mastercard, the second-largest payment processing company around the globe, has debuted a new program called Crypto Source that will help banks provide crypto trading services to their customers.

According to the Monday announcement, Crypto Source will "enable financial institutions to bring secure crypto trading capabilities and services to their customers." To successfully implement this venture, Mastercard has partnered with blockchain payments firm Paxos, which is already used by PayPal for a similar service.

"What we are announcing today is a connected approach to services that will help bring users safely and securely into the crypto ecosystem," said Ajay Bhalla, President, Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard. "Our recent investments in this space, such as the acquisition of CipherTrace and Ekata, are providing us with a unique set of capabilities to help provide our customers and consumers with the most technically advanced solutions available in the market," he added.

Mastercard recently debuted a crypto tool that would help banks identify and cut off cryptocurrencies tied to suspicious transactions in the digital assets space called Crypto Secure, which makes use of "sophisticated" artificial intelligence algorithms to figure out the risk of crime on crypto exchanges.

For Crypto Source, Mastercard will act as a "bridge" between Paxos and the banks that opt for the service. Interestingly, the primary reason why banks might lean toward opting for this service is that Mastercard and Paxos will handle regulatory compliance and security — two of the biggest reasons why banks have avoided crypto.

The announcement also pointed out that in the 2022 Mastercard New Payments Index, 29% of respondents confirmed that they held crypto while 65% said that they would prefer "crypto-related services to be provided by their current trusted financial institution."

"Our crypto product innovations will provide choice at scale and continue to bring one-of-a-kind opportunities to financial institutions as they seek to offer new, advanced services to their customers," said Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard.