In announcing its latest quarterly earnings, credit card company Mastercard (NYSE:MA) unveiled plans to further expand its cryptocurrency offerings, with Chief Executive Officer Michael Miebach telling investors “We have to be in this space.”
“What we believe we do is bring a perspective to the market as a multi-rail payment provider. We have to be in this space because people are looking for answers,” said Miebach.
Mastercard has been highly proactive in keeping up with innovations in digital currencies, spurred, in part, by competition with its main rival, Visa (NYSE:V).
In February of this year, Mastercard unveiled plans to support cryptocurrencies in 2021, paving the way for its nearly one billion cardholders to spend digital coins at more than 30 million supported merchants worldwide.
Now, the credit card provider has announced a new start-up engagement program as part of its “Mastercard Start Path,” an accelerator program aimed at supporting financial technology (fintech) companies working with digital assets, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Mastercard is also rolling out a virtual testing environment designed to help central banks to simulate issuance, distribution and transactions of digital currencies between multiple parties. The platform is geared for both wholesale and retail central bank digital currencies and offers practical insight into how a central bank currency could be interoperable with existing payment methods and be used to pay for various goods and services.
Miebach also said that Mastercard is looking into the stablecoin sector, which has already seen successful currencies such as Circle’s dollar-pegged USD Coin and is poised for the launch of Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) “Diem” coin. Miebach confirmed that the company is readying its network to support stablecoin transactions.
Earlier this month, Mastercard announced new partnerships with Circle, Paxos, Evolve Bank & Trust, and many others on a joint project to enable banks and cryptocurrency companies to roll out cryptocurrency cards that can be used anywhere that Mastercard is accepted.
