Today Mastercard announced Crypto Source, which enables banks to offer cryptocurrency trading to their clients. Paxos will provide the brokerage services and custody with Mastercard performing the integration with bank interfaces.
The card company recently unveiled its Crypto Secure solution to enable compliance. The latest service is in addition to crypto cards, its digital identity solutions, payments support, consulting services, and NFT initiatives.
“Our commitment is simple – to explore crypto and the underlying digital assets technology to support consumer choice in payments,” said Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard.
Paxos already provides crypto brokerage to PayPal and Venmo, amongst others. Additionally, Paxos Trust is a New York licensed custodian with a conditional bank trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Critically it offers segregated client assets.
The startup was recently announced as the crypto custody partner for EDX Markets, the institutional crypto exchange being launched by Fidelity, Schwab, Citadel Securities and others.
“This exciting offering developed by Paxos and Mastercard will give FIs the fastest and most trusted way to offer safe, reliable crypto access for their consumers globally,” said Walter Hessert, Head of Strategy at Paxos.
This isn’t Mastercard’s first crypto trading offering. A year ago, Mastercard announced a Crypto-as-a-Service partnership with Bakkt, the startup founded by NYSE owner ICE.
Apart from cryptocurrency, both Visa and Mastercard provide crypto consulting and are actively involved in central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives, with Mastercard being the first major organization to launch a CBDC sandbox.
