“Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: it’s about choice,” wrote Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president at Mastercard, in a post on Wednesday. “Mastercard is not here to recommend that you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to allow customers, merchants and companies to move digital value – traditional or cryptographic – however they wish.”
While Mastercard did not provide details on how customers could use bitcoin, the company said it would work something like this: When someone wants to buy an item with cryptocurrency, Mastercard’s crypto partners will convert the digital currency into traditional currency and then , will transmit through the Mastercard network.
This change “will allow many more merchants to accept encryption”, as well as “it will eliminate inefficiencies, allowing consumers and merchants to avoid having to make conversions between cryptography and traditional to make purchases,” said Mastercard.
But Mastercard will be the most popular and important bitcoin platform so far.
Mastercard customers are already using their cards “to buy crypto assets, especially during the recent increase in the value of bitcoin,” the company said in its statement. The company said that not all cryptocurrencies will be included and, although it did not specify that bitcoin will be one of the accepted ones, it was the only currency that Mastercard cited by name.
“We are also seeing users increasingly taking advantage of crypto cards to access these assets and convert them into traditional spending currencies,” added Mastercard.
Meanwhile, BNY Mellon – the oldest bank in the United States, whose history goes back to the founding of Bank of New York by Alexander Hamilton in 1784 – announced on Thursday that it had formed a “digital assets” unit that will help customers to meet the needs related to the growth of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, at an unspecified time later this year.
Customer demand and clearer regulation “present a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our current service offerings to this emerging field,” said Roman Regelman, Mellon’s CEO of asset maintenance and digital chief.
– Paul R. La Monica, CNN Business, contributed to this report