Mastercard has been awarded a new patent to improve payment services using blockchain technology. The patent filing was published Oct. 9 allowing Mastercard to capably store multiple transaction types and different formats.
The current way blockchain works to facilitates transactions has format restrictions on payment processing that can make things move quite slowly and requires bulkier infrastructure. To successfully create a block to add to a long line of blocks on the chain, data needs to be nearly uniform. Mastercard’s new patent resolves this inconvenient need for consistency.
The blockchain patent is aptly named “Method and system for partitioned blockchains and enhanced privacy for permissioned blockchains.” Partitioning the blocks allows for different styles and types of transactions to be linked in consecutive blockMs without disruption. According to the patent filing, this also works to enhance block security:
“As a result, the partitioned blockchain discussed herein may provide for not only the increased capacity of a blockchain, as being able to store transaction records of multiple formats, but also while maintaining security and trust levels of existing blockchain formats.”
Subnets, or the suggested partitions, resolve the need for multiple chains for different things and abridge a previously bulky system. Each subnet (a term coined by Mastercard in the patent) would be stylistically consistent but not isolated or separate in chain, instead, subnets would be able to function together as a system.
Mastercard’s introduces multi-payment types to coexist on one chain successfully and securely, which helps reduce computing power needs and enhancing the usage of permissions.
This isn’t Mastercard’s only blockchain-related patent, though it might be considered the feather in its distributed ledger cap, Mastercard will likely continue working on more and more revolutionary blockchain payment patents. The race for viable decentralized micropayment processing with transactions per second and security to match Web 2.0 platforms continually.
