Mastercard Teams With Paxos to Help Banks With Crypto Trading

Mastercard is expanding its partnership with cryptocurrency trading platform Paxos by launching Crypto Source, a new program to help financial institutions (FIs) up their game when it comes to crypto trading.

Under an expanded agreement, Paxos will provide crypto-asset trading and custody services on behalf of banks, while Mastercard will leverage its technology to integrate those capabilities into banks’ interfaces. The resulting goal is to provide a seamless buy, sell and trade experience for consumers, according to a Monday (Oct. 17) press release.

“Our commitment is simple — to explore crypto and the underlying digital assets technology to support consumer choice in payments,” said Mastercard Chief Digital Officer Jorn Lambert in the release. “… Our crypto product innovations will provide choice at scale and continue to bring one-of-a-kind opportunities to financial institutions as they seek to offer new, advanced services to their customers.”

The global payments and financial services company will act as a bridge between Paxos and banks, offering its banking partners a full suite of crypto-trading services for select assets, the release stated. Regulatory compliance, identity, cybersecurity and advisory services are also included and will be augmented by Mastercard Crypto Secure, which provides additional security and supports card issuers with compliance regulations.

Mastercard President of Cyber and Intelligence Ajay Bhalla said in the release that Mastercard’s other investments in the crypto trading space — the acquisitions of CipherTrace and Ekata — are already powering the company with a “unique set of capabilities” to give customers the “most technically advanced solutions” that can be found in the market.

Mastercard inked an agreement to CipherTrace in September 2021 for undisclosed terms in a move to combine both firms’ cyber capabilities and artificial intelligence (AI) power.

Read more: Mastercard Buys Crypto Intel Startup CipherTrace

With CipherTrace, Mastercard said it will be able to differentiate its card and real-time payments framework to benefit both clients and investors worldwide.

In April 2021, Mastercard bought identity verification firm Ekata for $850 million to advance its identity verification efforts.

See more: Mastercard to Buy Identity Verification Firm Ekata for $850M

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