Mastercard has put to sea its in-house 'Crypto Credential' P2P pilot program. Instead of using blockchain addresses, users will now be allowed to send and receive crypto using their Mastercard Crypto Credential IDs or aliases. This feature has been enabled on a host of exchanges that are Mastercard's partners - Bit2Me, Lirium, and Mercado. In fact, crypto wallet provider Foxbit has tied up with Mastercard to help expand the outreach.

Via this initiative, Mastercard is looking to put a cap on financial loss. It will do so by pre-screening transactions, ensuring senders do not send incompatible crypto assets to recipients’ addresses.

For now, users from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Uruguay can indulge in both domestic and international transfers involving multiple currencies across different blockchain networks. This initiative is set to further bolster and support the domestic, and cross-border remittance market.

Commenting on the latest development, Walter Pimenta, Executive Vice President of Product and Engineering for Latin America and the Caribbean, said,

“As interest in blockchain and digital assets continues to surge in Latin America and around the world, it is essential to keep delivering trusted and verifiable interactions across public blockchain networks.”

P2P transaction enablement is one of the many use cases that Mastercard Crypto Credential intends to support. NFTs, ticketing, and other payment solutions could be integrated going forward, depending on the market and the inherent regulations.

The crypto community was, by and large, thrilled at the announcement. However, skeptics were quick to vocalize their centralization concerns. Mastercard will be playing the role of an intermediary to verify users' identities. In fact, if funds are lost, it will also screen transactions.

For now, a selected group of crypto wallet users will take part in the pilot on a first-come first-serve basis. With respect to future plans, the announcement highlighted,

“Wider availability will roll out to more than 7 million users across the participating exchanges over the coming months.”

This is not the first time Mastercard has ventured into the blockchain arena. Back in H2 2023, it formed a CBDC program. Its initial partners for the initiative included Ripple and blockchain development firm ConsenSys. In other related news, PayPal’s native stablecoin, PYUSD, went live on Solana a day back.