Mastercard is one of the leading global payment platforms that process payments between the banks of merchants and the banks that have issued the Mastercards to the user. In the past few months, we have heard about the news of the involvement of Mastercard in various blockchain products, but no reports came forward from the company.
However, Ari Sarker, the co-president of Mastercard’s Asia Pacific division, has come forward and explained how the company is focusing on business-to-business payments and plans. The company has accepted that blockchain has a huge potential in the coming times, and it has helped in making large transactions easier and transparent between companies.
Sarker was careful enough not to name any specific blockchain programs, but one of the largest payment processors talking about blockchain has to be a hint for something.
Mastercard leaving Libra
Mastercard was one of the backing companies for Facebook’s Libra project, and last month, it was reported that the payment processing firm, along with Visa, eBay, and few other partners decided to leave the project. The reason given by this backing out from the project was given as “regulatory uncertainty.”
Sarker reacted to this by stating that it would be a potential liability for the platform to work with Libra amid the regulatory uncertainty. The company joined the project to help them with the regulations, but the company has taken a break from the project until the regulatory concerns aren’t solved.
Will it join Libra again?
We can expect Mastercard to be a part of the project again, but not before the regulatory problems get resolved. The involvement of the payment processing firm in the blockchain technology can be an indication of a better and updated platform to come our way.