A big day for crypto as payments giant Mastercard on Monday took a huge step inside the crypto space by massively expanding crypto access for businesses and consumers
As per an announcement on Tuesday, Mastercard is partnering with digital asset firm Bakkt and launching a range of options that will allow merchants and shoppers to be able to maximize crypto utilization in a variety of ways. Bakkt was founded in 2018 and is specialized in loyalty programs, gift cards and digital assets. The announcement stated:
“Mastercard customers can now enable consumers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency, deliver unique, crypto-centric loyalty opportunities, and streamline issuance of branded crypto debit and credit cards. [This is] a multifaceted partnership to make it easier for merchants, banks and fintechs [financial technology] in the US to embrace and offer a broad set of cryptocurrency solutions and services.”
Speaking to CNBC, Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael said:
“We’re lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto. It’s an easy way to get going because you’re not using cash, you’re putting something that’s an idle asset sitting on your balance sheet, and we’re allowing you to put in to work.”
According to Mastercard the integration of existing loyalty programs with crypto functionality will provide huge benefits:
“[We are] enabling… partners to offer cryptocurrency as rewards and create fungibility between loyalty points and other digital assets. This means that consumers can earn and spend rewards in cryptocurrency instead of traditional loyalty points and seamlessly convert their crypto holdings to pay for purchases.”
Mastercard is clearly embracing crypto and pushing it to go mainstream after it previously acknowledged the demand for the wider public to be able to use crypto when they want and need to:
“Mastercard and its partners will test this new capability to enable more banks and crypto companies to offer a card option to people wanting to spend their digital assets anywhere Mastercard is accepted.
Bakkt Holdings, Inc. (BAKKT) stock has seen massive gains on the day being up as much as 160% at one point, ending the day on a 234% win at $30.60. while surging another 70% on top of that in the after hours to $52.33.
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Source: Igaming
