Mastercard Launches New Crypto Product: Here’s What It Does

• Mastercard is continuing to focus on the crypto industry.
• The new product will launch first in the U.K.
• The company said crypto would become a “critical infrastructure” one day.

The crypto bear market continues to put pressure on the industry. However, there are positive signs even during hard times.

One such sign is Mastercard continuing to embrace crypto. The payment processor giant has just launched a new crypto product.

Mastercard Launches New Crypto Product

Mastercard came out on Thursday with a new crypto product. The flagship payment processing company announced Mastercard Multi-Token Network (MTN).

MTN is a set of foundational capabilities that allows for secure, scalable, and interoperable transactions within the blockchain and digital asset ecosystems. Mastercard highlighted four pillars of trust that MTN is standing on: Trust in counterparty, digital payment assets, technology, and customer protections.

Each trust is a key industry need that MTN will serve with the help of Mastercard’s existing crypto products like Mastercard Crypto Credential and others.

“We believe that digital asset and blockchain technologies today are on a similar trajectory, one day becoming critical infrastructure for storing and moving value. In bringing the power of 24/7 operations, programmability and immutability to all aspects of the economy, blockchain capabilities and tokenization can reach their full potential, delivering true transformation.”

MTN is set to launch in beta soon in the U.K. this summer. The network will act as a “testbed for developing live pilot applications and use cases with financial institutions, fintech, and central banks.”

On the Flipside

• Mastercard’s new product seems to be highly centralized. The company didn’t talk about decentralization in the product announcement at all.

Why This Matters

Mastercard continuing its crypto journey is a massive win for the industry and crypto adoption in general.

Read more about a recent ConsenSys crypto survey:

Majority Have Heard of Crypto but Not of Web3: ConsenSys Survey

Read more about what Paradigm thinks of crypto:

Has Paradigm Replaced Crypto with AI? Co-Founder Explains VC Firm’s View