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Mastercard opens access to Blockchain API

Mastercard announced that it will be opening up access to its blockchain technology via its API published on Mastercard Developers. Mastercard’s blockchain solution provides a new way for consumers, businesses and banks to transact and is key to the company’s strategy to provide payment solutions that meet every need of financial institutions and their end-customers.

The company has tested and validated its blockchain and will initially implement the technology in the business-to-business (B2B) space to address challenges of speed, transparency and costs in cross-border payments. The Mastercard blockchain technology will complement the company’s existing capabilities including virtual cards, Mastercard Send and Vocalink to support all types of cross-border, B2B payment flows – account-based, blockchain-based and card-based.

There are four key differentiators of the Mastercard blockchain – privacy, flexibility, scalability, and most importantly, the reach of the company’s settlement network.

• Privacy – Mastercard blockchain provides privacy by ensuring that transaction details are shared only amongst the participants of a transaction while maintaining a fully auditable and valid ledger of transactions.

• Flexibility – Partners can use the blockchain APIs in conjunction with a wider suite of Mastercard APIs to create a range of powerful, new applications. Software development kits are available in six different languages to make the APIs even easier to integrate.

• Scalability – Mastercard blockchain is designed for commercial processing speed and extensibility by reaching consensus between a trusted network moderator and network participants.

• Reach – Mastercard blockchain is integrated into the company’s payment network that includes 22 000 financial institutions to move funds that have been committed on the blockchain.

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