Mastercard Enters The Blockchain World: Introducing MasterCard Blockchain API

MasterCard, one of the leading financial services firms on the planet has concluded that it's the ideal opportunity for Mastercards to get engaged with blockchain technology, which brought forth the announcement that it's opening up access to a blockchain-based business-to-business (B2B) payment service under a new option called the “MasterCard Blockchain API.

This was launched during the Money 20/20 Hackathon in Las Vegas, after testing and validation had been completed. The company, in a press statement said; 

This is meant to provide a new way for consumers, businesses and banks to transact and is key to the company’s strategy to provide payment solutions that meet every need of financial institutions and their end-customers.

It is amazing however, knowing how MasterCard has dismissed Bitcoin in the past. Be that as it may, rather than being assumed control by blockchain technology, MasterCard has chosen to grasp the development, most particularly when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin portrayed blockhain to have an extraordinary capability of substituting Mastercards.

According to Futurism, Blockchain is believed to offer MasterCard users a more private and secure option for making transactions, one that is both easily scalable and flexible. The new blockchain API builds on MasterCard’s existing payment network, which covers some 22,000 financial institutions, and also expands blockchain’s capability to handle transactions. The move also solves some of the challenges that B2B schemes typically have, which include “speed, transparency, and costs in cross-border payments.” Ken Moore, Mastercard Labs EVP, in a press release said;

By combining MasterCard blockchain technology with our settlement network and associated network rules, we have created a solution that is safe, secure, auditable and easy to scale. When it comes to payments, we want to provide choice and flexibility to our partners where they are able to seamlessly use both our existing and new payment rails based on the needs and requirements of their customers.

We may start seeing experts predictions coming true if we keep seeing financial giants such as MasterCard stepping into the blockchain ecosystem. Good days ahead for the blockchain technology.

Reference: Futurism