During an interview published on Tuesday (August 2), Mastercard CFO Sachin Mehra shared his thoughts on crypto.
His comments were made during an interview with Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz.
With regard to crypto, he said:
“In the crypto world, we play the role as an on-ramp, with people using our debit and credit products to buy crypto. And we act as the off-ramp: When people want to cash it, we help them gain access to be able to use their crypto balances everywhere Mastercard is accepted. That’s a revenue-generating capability which has been fairly successful ever since crypto environments came up…
“For anything to be a payment vehicle in our mind, it needs to have a store of value. If something fluctuates in value every day, such that your Starbucks coffee today costs you $3 and tomorrow it’s going to cost you $9 and the day after it’s going to cost you a dollar, that’s a problem from a consumer-mindset standpoint. So we view crypto more as an asset class. But as a payment instrument, we think stablecoins and CBDCs [digital currencies issued by central banks] potentially have a little bit more runway.“
On June 9, Mastercard, announced that it has partnered with several crypto startups to “enable NFT commerce.”
According to a blog post published yesterday by Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Blockchain / Digital Asset Products and Digital Partnerships at Mastercard, his firm is collaborating with “Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Mintable, Spring, Nifty Gateway, and Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay” to “allow people to use their Mastercard cards for NFTs purchases, whether that’s on one of these companies’ marketplaces or using their crypto services.”
The blog post went on to say that “a new Mastercard survey of more than 35,000 people in 40 countries found that 45% had purchased an NFT or would consider doing so, and roughly half sought more flexibility — being able to pay with crypto for everyday purchases or using a credit or debit card to buy an NFT.” It also mentioned that they are using their “full suite of capabilities to reinforce customer safety, giving people similar protections to the ones they enjoy when making transactions in a store or online with a Mastercard card.”
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