Mastercard says its new solution that enables central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to be tokenized or wrapped onto different blockchains provides consumers with “a new option to participate in commerce across multiple blockchains with increased security and ease.” A Mastercard executive described: “As the digital economy continues to mature, Mastercard has seen demand from consumers to participate in commerce across multiple blockchains, including public blockchains.”
Mastercard’s New CBDC Tokenization Solution
Payments giant Mastercard announced Thursday that it has “successfully demonstrated capabilities of a new solution that enables CBDCs to be tokenized (or ‘wrapped’) onto different blockchains.” The company stated that this solution will provide consumers with “a new option to participate in commerce across multiple blockchains with increased security and ease.”
Richard Wormald, Mastercard Australasia’s division president, commented: “As the digital economy continues to mature, Mastercard has seen demand from consumers to participate in commerce across multiple blockchains, including public blockchains.” The executive emphasized:
This technology not only has the potential to drive more consumer choice, but it also unlocks new opportunities for collaboration between the public and private networks to drive genuine impact in the digital currency space.
Mastercard detailed that the solution was developed in partnership with Cuscal, a leading payment and data services provider in Australia, and NFTs-as-a-service provider Mintable. It is part of a research project by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the country’s central bank, and Digital Finance CRC (DFCRC) to explore potential CBDC use cases in Australia.
The payments giant explained:
Mastercard demonstrated in a live environment how the solution could enable the holder of a pilot CBDC to purchase a NFT listed on the Ethereum public blockchain.
“The process ‘locked’ the required amount of a pilot CBDC on the RBA’s pilot CBDC platform and minted an equivalent amount of wrapped pilot CBDC tokens on Ethereum,” Mastercard added.
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