Mastercard wants to make the state cryptocurrency available to everyone

Financial giant Mastercard is looking to support global banks with its Banking Digital Currency (BDC) program and believes that «continued global interest» has made 2023 the right time to launch the program. Raj Jamodgaran, Head of Digital Assets and Blockchain at Mastercard, spoke in more detail.

«Our goal is to stimulate and support different ways of making payments, as this is essential for the prosperity of the global economy,» Jamodgaran told Blockworks. The impetus for Mastercard to launch the central bank’s digital currency program was the publication of a survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The researchers found that approximately 93% of banks are exploring the potential launch of a CBDC.

«We are committed to exploring how we can make CBDCs as easy to use as other forms of money. Today we are doing this with several solutions to unlock more potential in this area. We hope that the program will help central banks understand how to develop CBDCs that will add new and valuable value to the global economy ,» Jamodgaran emphasized.

Mastercard is actively developing in the digital assets segment. Back in early 2021, the organization issued a bank card for Bahamians who would like to use the local CBDC. The company’s representatives have also recently set up a testbed to study tokenized bank deposits in the UK. It is expected that in the medium term, this platform will allow the deployment of CBDCs and regulated stablecoins.

Mastercard has also recently announced that Ukraine has entered the top 5 countries in the world by the number of contactless payments using gadgets. It was joined by Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.