Inside the Ankr and Mastercard Partnership
Mastercard was one of the first to pioneer financial products that made physical cash no longer necessary for the shopping and business applications of everyday life. They helped reshape financial systems with new convenience and new ways of thinking about credit and debit in the 1960s until every American had a Mastercard or other bank card in their wallet.
Since then, Mastercard hasn’t stopped innovating and continues to change the game by providing one of the most sought-after new features to customers — digital assets.
“We are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value — traditional or crypto — however they want.”
- Raj Dhamodharan, EVP Mastercard Digital Asset Products in 2021
What Are Ankr and Mastercard Working On?
Ankr is now a part of Mastercard’s Start Path cryptocurrency and blockchain startup accelerator program. This is Mastercard’s global startup engagement program that is designed to help established and proven fintech and crypto startups scale their business to reach a growing global userbase.
Mastercard will provide Ankr with ways to use its existing fintech resources, APIs, and extensive range of other solutions. They will work with Ankr to launch new products, partnerships, and user experiences.
Bringing brand new financial products to the world
Ankr is one of the pioneers of staking cryptocurrency and has one of the largest and most established networks of validator nodes in the world. We are helping Mastercard consider ways to introduce staking as a fixed-income financial tool for the credit card industry. This is something that would revolutionize both traditional finance and the Web3 world, especially as the APY of staking is usually around ten times larger than even the highest yield savings accounts.
Providing blockchain infrastructure for crypto transactions
Mastercard and every other entity or application wanting to facilitate crypto transactions will need access to blockchain infrastructure to do so. Ankr can provide Mastercard with the underlying blockchain node infrastructure for 50+ networks to enable their global crypto payment rails.
Building the future of commerce
As the world shifts increasingly toward new digital ways of life and business, it makes sense for companies that have already established a legacy to enter the future of commerce by partnering with Web3-native startups like Ankr. Together we can make blockchain technology accessible to all and show everyone how crypto and the new financial models of Web3 can benefit the world.
