Us Patent Office Approves Mastercard’s Blockchain Patent to Link Crypto

The United States Patent and Trademark Office approved a patent that was filed by Mastercard allowing customers to link cryptocurrencies to fiat accounts. Mastercard had applied for a patent way back in May, to allow the card holders to store cryptocurrencies equivalent to fiat currency in a bank account as well as fiat currencies. However, readers should note that the turnaround in the company’s stance was quite sudden.

Back in December, when cryptocurrency market was at its highest, Mastercard was one of the companies that had stated that it would be levying transactional fees on their customers for buying cryptocurrencies. However, it was not the only credit card company to do so. Banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and other credit card companies such as Visa and Citi had also displayed a similar anti-crypto stance.

Not only that, in May, when it performed poorly in its first quarter, Mastercard blamed cryptocurrency wallets for its dismal performance. At the time a top ranking officer had said that “This is due to the recent drop-off in crypto wallet funding.”

Following that, they had presented a soft stance, stating that the company was okay with cryptocurrencies as long as it is backed by a regulator. To be fair, since then one of US’s prominent regulators, Securities and Exchange Commission has stated that it doesn’t view bitcoin as security.

Can Mastercard control ‘faster transaction time’ on blockchain? Mastercard is also planning to attract more customers by “speeding up transactions” and “providing security to the payee”. To a layman, who is mildly interested in cryptocurrencies, it does sound rather attractive. However, someone who has been in the cryptocurrency market for a significant length of time may wonder how accurate is the claim pertaining to ‘speeding up transactions’ is. Since the speed of transaction depends on the type of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain that it uses, it raises a red flag.

Elaborating its point, a representative of the company said, “Consumers and merchants that are accustomed to fast transaction times are often either forced to wait a significant amount of time for a blockchain transaction to be conducted, or the payee must rely on the payer's good faith that their transfer will be valid.”

Interestingly, this patent is different from the blockchain network the company is currently working on. The company promises to keep several factors in mind while developing the decentralized ledger such as privacy, flexibility, scalability, ease of use and most importantly, it vows to be a trusted partner.