By
Tolu Ajiboye
April 17th, 2024
The Mastercard CEO, Michael Miebach, is confident that the company is ready to offer its service when governments begin to issue CBDCs.
Financial services company Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA) is preparing its network for the deployment of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The company’s CEO Michael Miebach revealed the matter during the Q3 earnings call on the 28th of October. At the earnings call, the Mastercard CEO discussed his bullish stance on the crypto industry. Over the past months, a large percentage of the financial services company has used their Mastercard to purchase crypto assets. At the same time, the company has been entering into different partnerships with several crypto firms.
The CEO specifically noted that there could not be an earnings call without a crypto discussion. Speaking further, he stated:
“We are saying at this point in time, the most likely chance for this kind of technology to work for payments is if it’s issued through a government in the form of a CBDC. We said that on a couple of calls before, and we said that we will make our network ready to do so when a government is ready to put out a CBDC that will exist alongside the dollar or the euro as a settlement currency in our network.”
Mastercard Prepares Ahead of CBDCs Issuance
With the ongoing CBDCs projects globally, Mastercard said it is ready as a service provider for digital currencies.
Confidently, the Mastercard CEO said that the company could provide a secure space for governments and private sector banks to figure out how CBDCs will work when it is finally issued officially.
In addition to Mastercard’s growth in the crypto ecosystem, the company announced its plan to acquire crypto intelligence company CipherTrace. The payment processing company has shown a great interest in crypto and CBDCs with its latest moves. Mastercard said it was acquiring CipherTrace to monitor crypto payments on its platform. According to the company, the acquisition will enhance its crypto capabilities.
When asked about the crypto and digital asset strategy, the Mastercard CEO referred to the CipherTrace acquisitions “massive services opportunity.” He added that CipherTrace drives compliance into crypto transactions.
Most recently, Mastercard has collaborated with digital asset platform Bakkt (NYSE: BKKT) to offer crypto solutions and services. Mastercard said the partnership would allow its US costumes to sell, buy, and hold digital assets on their custodial wallets. The news led to a profitable trading day for BKKT, initially jumping more than 50% and surging further by 120%.
Except for an increase of 13.59% Mastercard pulled over the past year, the company’s stock has been on a decline. Since the beginning of 2021, MA has lost nearly 7%. Also, the payments processing company has shaded 14.25% in the last three months and lost more than 4% in the last month. In addition, MA has plunged 6.51% in the last five days.
Last year, Mastercard proceeded 113 billion transactions globally, according to Statistica.