Mastercard will facilitate the offering of bitcoin crypto services by any of its merchants following a partnership with Bakkt, the bitcoin custodial platform.
“We want to offer all of our partners the ability to more easily add crypto services to whatever it is they’re doing,” Sherri Haymond, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital partnerships, said in an interview before adding:
“Our partners, be they banks, fintechs or merchants can offer their customers the ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through an integration with the Baktt platform.”
Bakkt will provide Crypto-as-a-Service to Mastercard’s merchants which “will be able to offer cryptocurrency solutions” they said in a statement.
That include the ability for consumers to buy, sell and hold digital assets through custodial wallets powered by the Bakkt platform and streamlined issuance of branded crypto debit and credit cards.
Mastercard will also integrate crypto into its loyalty solutions, enabling its partners to offer cryptocurrency as rewards and create fungibility between loyalty points and other digital assets.
This means that consumers can earn and spend rewards in cryptocurrency instead of traditional loyalty points and seamlessly convert their crypto holdings to pay for purchases.
“We’re lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto,” said Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael.
