Mastercard Teams With Crypto Giants on Blockchain Payment Program

Mastercard has launched an initiative aimed at exploring the future of cryptocurrency payments.

The company’s Crypto Partner Program, announced Wednesday (March 11), brings together 85 different digital asset and payments companies, including high-profile players like Binance, Circle, Gemini, PayPal and Ripple.

According to the announcement, the program is designed to address digital assets’ transition from something that “ran in parallel to existing financial systems” to something being used for cross-border remittances and B2B money transfers.

“Recognizing how much there is to learn from the innovators building on chain every day, the program will allow expertise and insights to flow both ways as we shape the future together,” Mastercard said in its announcement.

“The Mastercard Crypto Partner Program reflects a core belief that the next phase of on-chain payments will be built through collaboration.”

With this program, participants will work with Mastercard on the design and direction of products and services, such as ways to join the speed and programmability offered by digital assets together with established card rails and commerce flows, per the announcement.

The goal here is to meld innovation, consistent standards and responsible growth via a shared framework for collaboration, Mastercard said.

“The focus is practical execution: translating technical innovation into scalable, compliant use cases that can operate across markets and integrate seamlessly into everyday commerce,” the company added.

In related news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Mastercard Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan about the question of whether stablecoins and crypto posed a threat to his company.

Mastercard and the card networks, that report noted, have spent decades building an answer to the “last mile” problem in payments, with solutions like global acceptance, identity verification, fraud prevention, dispute resolution and compliance frameworks covering 210 countries.

Dhamodharan’s argument to PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster during an episode of the “From the Block” podcast is that stablecoins arrive without any of that institutional infrastructure. That means the last mile isn’t a problem for Mastercard, but rather an opening.

“The merchant may continue to want to receive value in fiat because their everyday expenses are in fiat,” he said.

In other words, PYMNTS wrote, someone still needs to handle the translation between the real and on-chain worlds, and “Mastercard has been in the translation business for half a century.”