Mastercard is teaming up with Web3 players on an on-chain identity and verification framework covering a variety of applications in payments, remittances, ticketing and NFTs.
Mastercard Crypto Credential is designed to help companies, developers, and individuals to realise the full potential of powering payments, commerce, and economic value on-chain and across borders.
Among the partners onboard are crypto wallet providers Bit2Me, Lirium, Mercado Bitcoin and Uphold, which are working on an initial project to enable transfers between the US and Latin America and the Caribbean corridors.
The company is also teaming up with public blockchain network organisations Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, Polygon and The Solana Foundation. Aptos says it is among the shortlist of blockchains to enable the identity and attestation element of sending and receiving funds through Web3.
The partners also intend to explore the utility of identity-oriented Web3 solutions use cases like NFTs, ticketing, enterprise, and payments.
Raj Dhamodharan, EVP, digital asset and blockchain product and partnerships, Mastercard, says: "With Mastercard Crypto Credential, we can help ensure that those interested in interacting across Web3 environments are meeting defined standards for the types of activities they’d like to pursue.
"Mastercard Crypto Credential will not only define verification standards and levels, but also provide necessary enabling technology to help bring more use cases to life."
Separately, Mastercard has signed up another six blockchain and digital asset startups for its StartPath programme, giving participants training, access to channels and customers as well as subject matter expertise, and an opportunity for technical collaboration.
The new members are Axelar, Cheeze, Coala Pay, Qonbay.io, RociFi Labs and Suberra.