Mastercard partners Paxos to help bring crypto trading to banks: report

Mastercard (NYSE: MA), one of the world’s leading payment providers, is looking to bring crypto trading to more users via a program set to enable the participation of banks, a new report says.

Mastercard to help banks offer crypto trading

The latest crypto news report has revealed that the payments giant will partner with crypto trading platform Paxos in a deal that will see financial institutions like banks offer cryptocurrency trading to their clients.

According to a CNBC report published Monday, Mastercard will make this possible by acting as “bridge” between banks and Paxos.

On top of that, the company will manage the compliance and security aspects of the service, the two factors being top regulatory concerns allegedly keeping banks and their clients off the crypto trading market.

Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief digital officer, told CNBC that latest polls indicate demand for the crypto asset class is high, despite the recent bear market mauling.  The banker noted that almost 60% of people want to get into the sector, but would prefer doing so via their banking providers.

Noting that crypto is indeed still “a little scary for some people,” Lambert added:

“There’s a lot of consumers out there that are really interested in this, and intrigued by crypto, but would feel a lot more confident if those services were offered by their financial institutions.”

The partnership with Paxos comes just days after Mastercard debuted its risk assessment tool Crypto Secure, which as Invezz reported, aims at helping    banks and other issuers protect against potential fraud schemes on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Mastercard is offering the fraud protection tool via its recently acquired blockchain security platform CipherTrace.

In October 2021, we also covered Mastercard’s partnership with crypto custody firm Bakkt, a collaboration that was also aimed at making it easy for banks to enter the crypto trading space.

The latest move cements these steps, with Mastercard looking to offer not just compliance on aspects like anti-money laundering, but also help verify transactions, the CNBC report noted.