Financial Giant Mastercard is making great efforts to enter into the blockchain and cryptocurrency market, based on the multiple new postings on the job board of the company.
As per the updated job postings by the company, Mastercard is looking to fill three senior-level positions. These include:
“Director, Product Management - Crypto Currency/ Wallets, Director, Product Development & Innovation - Blockchain Solutions Architect, and VP, Product Management - Blockchain/Crypto.”
Some other roles which Mastercard is looking to occupy also mention experience in the blockchain technology, for instance, vice president of network tech product management, director of payments platform and networks, senior analyst for strategic program management and others.
As per the post’s job description, the company seems to be focusing its energy on forming “wallet solution” for cryptocurrency. Two of the job offerings, the director of product management, and the VP position desires that the candidate should have expertise in controlling crypto wallets, and define that the duty includes:
“Leading the ideation, definition, design, and development of innovative cryptocurrency solutions, including wallet solutions.”
However, there is no information available about which altcoins wallet would support, on which platforms wallet will be open and or when will be released officially.
The new leadership team is further going to support blockchain concepts with Mastercard itself. As per the description of the director and VP positions, they will have to “establish shared vision across the company by influencing and building consensus among the various stakeholders.”
As per the recent announcement by Mastercard, it would be one of the partners of Facebook’s Libra Project. This has made some analysts consider that it would be operating towards becoming a wallet provider for the Libra platform.
Here, the question arrives that whether Mastercard will start its journey to become a crypto wallet provider for partner projects like Libra or give a chance to other firms in the crypto world.
Due to any issues, if there is a delay in the release of Libra network, the blockchain wallet initiatives by Mastercard might still be connected to Facebook.
In short, the main purpose of Facebook’s Libra is to provide affordable transactions for unbanked people.
Before the release of Libra, Facebook Messenger teamed up with Mastercard in 2018 to help small businesses, especially in Africa, to provide electronic payments. There is a strong chance that Facebook and Facebook messenger might introduce a new blockchain partnership in the near future, either in the presence or absence of Libra.
Blockchain-related projects by Mastercard first became public in 2017, when the firm declared that it is working on building a blockchain.
From 2017, Mastercard disclosed that it is releasing its blockchain for trials by merchants and banks. Out of 175 engineers firm recruited last year, majority of them are professionals working in the blockchain field.