Payments Giants See the Writing on the Wall

Even in a crypto winter payment giants like Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and more continue to roll out and offer crypto products. This shows these payment processors see the writing on the wall. They either need to adopt and adapt or get left behind. These companies are run by smart people though who know that the latter is not an option. Visa and Mastercard both dipped their toes in really starting last year with the crypto debit cards and had some decent success. Paypal went a different direction allowing users to directly buy and sell crypto from their trading platform.

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One important cog has thus far really stayed on the sidelines considering the role they could take, which would be the banks. At a national level, the U.S. regulations are confusing and unclear, and rather than face the wrath of Congress and regulators the large banks have stayed away. On a state level, it has been a different story with different states issuing rules to their state banks giving them clear access to crypto (both Wyoming and Texas have done this). Recently we have seen an uptick in banks starting to get close to directly dealing with crypto with some of the various offerings but there is still a noticeable lag.

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Mastercard announced today a solution for this and I am surprised no one had moved on this idea earlier. Paxos is a crypto trading platform based out of Wyoming that has worked closely with regulators at a state and national level to create as safe as you can get in the space products. They are actually who is behind BUSD as they manage the reserves and the books that the government could/will want to see. Mastercard will serve as a bridge between Paxos and banks handling all of the regulatory compliance and security. The payments company said that research had shown them that people who either have not been involved with crypto or are new to the space would prefer to enter said space via their existing banks so Mastercard wants to help facilitate that and handle all of the regulatory compliance rules, anti-money laundering, and verifying transactions on behalf of banks to help onboard more people.

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Now, do I find this pretty funny given that crypto and blockchain were supposed to disrupt these very companies and institutions? A little bit but I also see it as a form of validating the industry and speeding up adoption by the masses. It is a catch-22 that the industry needs to continue to monitor since these are for-profit companies that have to make money off of this one way or another. Right now, since the industry is down and there have been so many high-profile collapses this could serve as a way to help boost confidence again and encourage people to enter the space.