Mastercard is turning to blockchain to help better track consumer payments. In a recent patent filing, the payment mega company reveals their plans to use the distributed ledger technology to record “point-to-point transactions” in real-time.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published their patent applications that tell how Mastercard intends to use the technology. Through recording these transactions on the public ledger, Mastercard can maintain a tamper-proof log to help streamline the purchasing and registration process. The series of documents outline how the payment platform could potentially use smart-contracts to automate verification and order status.
Many famed cryptocurrency platforms like Bitcoin Cash, for example, have been racing to become the first viable and widely used micro-payment platform for digital P2P or B2B transactions. No one entity has yet to provide a secure thoroughfare for payments that can handle transactions per second to rival non-blockchain payment companies like Visa or PayPal.
One patent, in particular, discusses a method for making cryptocurrency payment faster. Mastercard is gearing up to hire blockchain developers, as they look, very realistically, ahead into the decentralized tech future. The patent details the use of private and public key cryptography and other distributed ledger mechanisms. Mastercard claims:
“There is a need to improve on the storage and processing of transactions that utilize blockchain currencies”
Mastercard is looking to close the gap between fiat and cryptocurrency with their new patent suite. With the realization of nanosecond crypto-payment processing underway, now the public eagerly waits to see who will be the first to have the transactions per second and high-security network to become the most widely used cryptocurrency payment platform and bring cryptocurrency to the next level of adopt-ability.
Mastercard doesn’t just want to elevate cryptocurrency, the company also believes deploying blockchain solutions will work to reduce fraud, improve audits, and allow for better risk assessment. They see the distributed ledger as a better, more reliable data management system that hinges on its immutability. Currently, demographic information, transaction data, credit bureau data, and other various data points are not available on crypto payment platforms. Mastercard is looking to merge the perhaps overly discrete nature of cryptocurrency payment as we know it with the data-heavy fiat financial services world.
This is not Mastercard’s first go at rolling out blockchain plans, they had applied in 2017 for a patent in an attempt to design refund services for cryptocurrency purchases. Now with these three patents’ approval, they can move forward with long-sought-after blockchain integration.
