Global payments giant Mastercard has gone live with a service designed to make peer-to-peer crypto payments simpler and more secure in a number of European and Latin American nations.
The “Crypto Credential” service will give users a Mastercard alias (basically a simple username) to send and receive Bitcoin and other coins and tokens via crypto exchanges like Bit2Me, Lirium, and Mercado Bitcoin, which operate in countries like Brazil, Argentina, and France.
When sending cryptocurrencies, users typically work with wallet addresses—long and essentially random combinations of letters and numbers. But if a sender or recipient uses the wrong address, funds can be lost. Mastercard says its service prevents this.
“If the receiving wallet does not support the asset or blockchain, the sender is notified and the transaction does not proceed, protecting all parties from the potential loss of funds,” the payments giant explained.
Additionally, scammers often use lookalike addresses to trick victims into sending digital assets, as many services truncate the display to show only the first and last few characters.
This solution not only enhances security but a significant step toward making crypto more user-friendly and reducing the risk of errors in transfers.
How It Works:
- The exchange verifies a user under the set of Mastercard Crypto Credential standards.
- The user obtains an alias to send and receive funds across all supported exchanges.
- When a user initiates a transfer, Mastercard Crypto Credential verifies that the recipient’s alias is valid and that the recipient’s wallet supports the digital asset and associated blockchain.
- If the receiving wallet does not support the asset or blockchain, the sender is notified, and the transaction does not proceed, protecting all parties from potential losses.
This milestone marks the first real-world application of the Mastercard Crypto Credential vision, which was unveiled at Consensus in 2023. The live Mastercard Crypto Credential P2P transactions represent the potential to further expand and support the domestic and cross-border remittance market.
In the future, the system may also extend to other use cases such as NFTs, ticketing, and additional payment solutions, depending on market demand and compliance requirements.
As more users adopt cryptocurrencies, user-friendly solutions like this will play a crucial role in ensuring seamless and secure transactions across borders and platforms.
Finally, a select group of crypto wallet users will leverage Mastercard Crypto Credential on a first-come, first-serve basis.
As reveaied to the media, wider availability will roll out to more than 7 million users across the participating exchanges over the coming months.
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