- Mastercard has unrolled plans to include cryptocurrencies on its platform says Raj Dhamodharan, Head of Digital Assets
- Products and Digital Partnership at Mastercard
- Mastercard specifically mentions FIRST and Wirex as its potential partners and collaborators as it seeks to make the first leap into the crypto frontier
- Wirex introduced Nano on its platform and offers 0.5% back for purchases done with Wirex Card.
On February 10th, 2021, Mastercard unveiled its plan to introduce cryptocurrencies on its platform to enable customers, merchants, and businesses to transact better as the world goes fully digital.
In the newsletter circulated to its subscribers, the company announced that it has teamed up with Wirex, Bitpay, and LVL to bring these cryptocurrency ideas to fruition. Already, Wirex has a stellar relationship with Nano having accepted it on its platform and heavily promoting it on Valentine’s Day.
Nano: Tiny, Yet So Powerful
Nano (NANO) formerly known as RaiBlockd is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency based on the direct acyclic graph (DAG) architecture. Using a block-lattice data structure, it operates without third parties.
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Launched in October 2015, Nano currency has 133,248,297 units in circulation which are also its supply limit. According to its White Paper, Nano: A Feeless Distributed Crypto Currency Network, it describes Nano as a feeless, split-second transaction currency.
Since each user has their own blockchain, they can always update asynchronously to the network resulting in minimal overhead costs, these qualities have made the low latency crypto to be perfectly poised to be the biggest gainer following MasterCard’s announcement.
The privacy and security that it offers simply make it ideal for Mastercard as the payment gateway looks to jumpstart its crypto renaissance with Nano Currency.
On The Flipside
- Mastercard may have difficulties finding a perfect main cryptocurrency that matches the criteria as stability isn’t guaranteed says, industry analysts
- The payment giants announced that they will support only cryptocurrencies that meet a number of requirements.
- These requirements include stability, privacy, and compliance with money laundering laws – only a handful of cryptocurrencies meet Mastercard’s criteria, if there are actually any
MasterCard’s Announcement Props Nano Currency For Mainstream Use
Payment gateway giants, Mastercard recently announced on its platform that it will begin supporting crypto-currencies that meet its criteria on its network. The company decided to make this move having observed the trend of consumers using their Mastercard debit cards to buy crypto assets.
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Seeing the world rapidly embrace digitization, Mastercard wants to make the process seamless for its users. While the company did not explicitly announce which cryptocurrencies will be supported on its platform, it gave certain criteria that must be met.
Chief amongst them is that cryptocurrencies should provide strong consumer protection, privacy, and security. The Cryptos should also allow stakeholders like financial institutions and merchants to collaborate and reap the benefits from the blockchain network.
Finally, the Cryptos should be in complete compliance with the law and regulations against money laundering.
From the newsletter, Mastercard announced that it has already entered a partnership with Wirex and Bitpay to create crypto cards. Wirex’s affinity with Nano coins is hard to ignore.
In 2019, Wirex introduced Nano to its platform and referred to it as a perfect match citing its speed of the transaction. Presently, all purchases with Nano in the store made with Wirex card pay back 0.5% which means the stable coin perfectly matches MasterCard's criteria.
We may well be about to see another major price rally in crypto-currencies as Nano prepares to go mainstream.
