Mastercard unveils new partnership with Solana and Polygon to create Crypto Credential

In partnership with several blockchain networks and exchanges, Mastercard is working on a solution called Crypto Credential. The goal is to strengthen trust in this new ecosystem.

Indeed, at the Consensus conference on Friday, card payment specialist Mastercard unveiled a new initiative to establish a set of common standards and infrastructure that will “attest to ‘trusted interactions’ between consumers and businesses using blockchain networks.”

The partnership with Solana and Polygon is significant because both platforms are known for their speed and scalability, making them ideal partners for a project of this nature.

With Mastercard Crypto Credential, we can help ensure that those who want to interact in Web3 environments adhere to the standards defined for the types of activities they wish to pursue. Mastercard Crypto Credential will not only define the standards and levels of verification, but also provide the technology to help bring more use cases to life,” the firm wrote in a statement.

Crypto Credential, Mastercard and other providers?

As part of this project, Mastercard has also partnered with crypto service providers with Bit2Me, Mercado Bitcoin or Uphold. The American giant is also counting on the publishers of blockchain networks Aptos, Avalanche, Polygon and Solana to bring the solution to application developers of their respective networks.

Mastercard has been diving into Web3 for several years. Earlier this year, Mastercard expanded into music with its latest launch: a web3-enabled music artist gas pedal program. The Mastercard Artist Accelerator program selects five chosen artists to connect with dynamic mentors and fanbases. The program also allows artists to move from web2 to web3.

“For example, the Mastercard Music Pass NFT, which we launched as an extension of the Mastercard Artist Accelerator, requires different verification criteria than our work with Immersve. Simply put, the level of verification required for a person to receive an NFT differs significantly from the authentication required for a person to transfer digital assets or receive assets to crypto wallets,” Mastercard said of Crypto Credential.

More concretely, the solution should allow for the creation of “simple and easy-to-remember” aliases. Crypto Credential is also expected to bring “richer information” to blockchain transactions via metadata and enable leveraging CipherTrace’s suite of services.