Mastercard has officially revealed its acquisition of the top crypto intelligence firm, CipherTrace. Per the announcement, Mastercard seeks to use this investment to expand its foray into the virtual asset space.
Mastercard Incorporates CipherTrace Technologies
Part of CipherTrace services includes unmasking anonymous digital asset transactions and tracking crypto-related fraud activities. The official announcement further stated that Mastercard would use CipherTrace’s technologies to assist various firms in mitigating risks in the crypto space and assist them with complying with crypto policies in their existing regions. A top executive at Mastercard, Ajay Bhalla, added that virtual assets could revolutionize commerce and make them highly inclusive and more efficient.
“The fast rise in the adoption of the virtual asset space requires the creation of a secure and trusted environment. Hence, we hope to integrate CipherTrace’s technologies into ours to achieve this purpose.” Last year, CipherTrace CEO, disclosed the main objective of his company is to assist crypto firms in running their businesses efficiently without running afoul of regulators’ policies.
Mastercard Continues To Make Crypto Inroads
Mastercard continues to make inroads into the crypto space and has increased its investment in this space since the beginning of this year like other institutional investors. The company further said one other important reason for its acquisition of CipherTrace is the rising use cases of digital assets, including compliance policies, user security, and anti-fraud measures.
Before this new acquisition, Mastercard partnered with CoinJar (an Aussie-based digital asset exchange) last month to create the first-ever crypto ATM card. Thus, users can use their digital currencies to make payment settlements without converting them to cash before doing so. Also, two months ago, the credit card giants created a digital asset adoption aimed at helping startups’ growth in the sector and providing relevant solutions for industry problems such as tokenizing assets and data safety.
This year, Bitcoin’s rising popularity and use cases into the crypto sector have proven to institutional investors the several opportunities wide open for them in the crypto space. Thus, their investment in the space is a testament to the integration of centralized finance into the decentralized digital asset industry.
Mastercard Also Expands Its Digital Solutions Reach
Mastercard also announced today that it had reached a deal to purchase Aiia (an open banking tech solution). Thus, enabling its users to create digital solutions for daily life needs. The company is buying Aiia because it offers data solutions that align with Mastercard’s payment solution objectives.
This new acquisition proves Mastercards’ business research team in extending Mastercards’ offerings into several niches. Also, Mastercard can serve Aiia’s European clients with credit scoring and decision systems.
Asia CEO, Rune Mai, commented on the announcement saying, we have been in partnership with various financial institutions for over ten years. In this period, our APIs have been proven to be effective in the open banking system. A top-level executive with Mastercard, Craig Vosburg, opined that “this new integration enables us to keep expanding our service offerings across the world which aligns with our mission objective.”
