On October 17, Mastercard officially announced a new program named “Crypto Source,” to allow financial institutions to fetch crypto trading capabilities and services to their users. The new program is designed to enable customers to purchase, hold and trade cryptocurrencies, complemented by Mastercard’s proprietary Crypto Secure solution for additional security and compliance. 

The tool is reportedly expected to launch in Q4 of 2022 in cooperation with Mastercard's existing partner Paxos Trust Company. Paxos also provides similar types of assistance to PayPal, the global payment giant, which launched its first crypto services in 2020. 

Within the new partnership, Paxos will offer custody services and crypto asset trading custody services for the banks, while Mastercard will convey its technology to incorporate crypto trading into the interfaces of the banks. 

The president of Mastercard’s cyber and intelligence unit, Ajay Bhalla called attention to the organization's mounting crypto expertise and obligation to the market. He referenced recent crypto-related investments of Mastercard, including acquisitions of the digital identity platform Ekata in April 2021 and the crypto intelligence service CipherTrace in September 2022. 

Declaring the news, Mastercard alluded to the 2022 Mastercard New Payments Index, detailing that 29% of respondents all around the world hold cryptocurrency as an investment. Another 65% of respondents supposedly indicated a preference for crypto services to be given by their current ongoing financial organization. 

“What we are announcing today is a connected approach to services that will help bring users safely and securely into the crypto ecosystem,” Bhalla noted. 

Walter Hessert, the strategy head of Paxos, also highlighted the size of Mastercard’s global network of financial institutions. According to Hessert, the new tool will provide banks with the “most trusted way to offer safe, reliable crypto assets.” 

Mastercard’s latest crypto drive comes in the midst of the total crypto market capitalization falling around 60% starting from the start of this year. As per Jorn Lambert, Mastercard’s chief digital officer, it would be “shortsighted to think that a little bit of a crypto winter heralds the end of it.” 

“As regulation comes in, there is going to be a higher degree of security available to the crypto platforms, and we’ll see a lot of the current issues getting resolved in the quarters in the years to come,” Lambert reportedly stated.