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Payments giant Mastercard has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange platform Bakkt to allow US merchants, banks, and fintechs to offer crypto solutions and services.
Sherri Haymond, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital partnerships, their partners will be able to offer customers the ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through an integration with the Bakkt platform.
Crypto will also be integrated into Mastercard’s loyalty solutions, allowing its partners to offer cryptocurrency as rewards while creating fungibility between loyalty points and other digital assets.
According to Mastercard, Bakkt extends its ecosystem of cryptocurrency partners to enable crypto-as-a-service, which provides quick access to cryptocurrency capabilities.
The custodial wallets to be used by Mastercard partners, which streamlines the issuance of branded crypto debit and credit cards, would be powered by the Bakkt platform.
Mastercard has relationships with over 20,000 financial institutions worldwide.
There are also 2.8 billion of its cards in use.
Mastercard and Visa both had 52.9 million merchants, according to an October 2019 Nilson Report.
