Mastercard’s CEO has detailed the company’s plans to create services around stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). “We want to have a role across all of these … It’s obviously an energetic space around digital currencies,” he said.
Payments giant Mastercard gave an update about its crypto plans during the firm’s recent earnings call. CEO Michael Miebach reported that his company wants to play a role in all three possible crypto areas. In addition to cryptos like bitcoin, Mastercard also wants to work with private sector stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies. He said:
“We want to have a role across all of these … It’s obviously an energetic space around digital currencies … This is a new relevant technology. As a multi-rail company, we must be in this space because people are seeking answers.”
For cryptocurrency, Miebach said: “We are making it easier for crypto wallets to connect to our network seamlessly through a pilot with Circle, Paxos and Evolve Bank & Trust, which makes the conversion of cryptocurrency into fiat easier.” The executive said: “Separately, we are partnering with Consensys, a company providing Ethereum software engineering, to accelerate the creation of crypto applications and services to our clients.”
On crypto investing, the CEO said:
“Clearly, people are investing in it. They don’t want to sell these investments, and we are going to make this as simple as possible. So we get all these partnerships.”
In terms of stablecoins, the CEO said that Mastercard is “working with private sector companies as well as regulators on policy surrounding private sector stablecoins because this issue about regulatory compliance is not yet resolved.”
Miebach then restated what he said during Mastercard’s recent Q1 earnings call that the company was “getting set to technologically allow our network to have these stablecoins as settlement options given they meet all three of our selected criteria, which is regulation compliance, consumer safeguards and stability.”
In terms of central bank digital currencies, the CEO said that a growing amount of central banks are researching CBDCs, including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank (ECB).
Author: Steven Sinclaire
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