Mastercard To Launch New Tool "Crypto Secure" For Combating Fraud
CipherTrace, a blockchain security firm, powers the service that Mastercard purchased in 2017. CipherTrace, a California-based company, assists organizations and authorities in investigating unauthorized cryptocurrency transactions. Its primary competitors are the New York-based Chainalysis and the London-based Elliptic.
Mastercard IntroducesSolution To Combat Fraud
Mastercard is introducing the solution to combat rising criminal activity in the emerging digital asset sector. According to blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, the amount of cryptocurrency entering wallets with known illegal connections increased to a record $14 billion last year. 2022 has also seen a wave of high-profile cyberattacks and con games targeting cryptocurrency investors.
Banks and other card issuers are presented with a dashboard on the Crypto Secure platform that has colored ratings for the likelihood of suspicious behavior, with red denoting "high" risk and green denoting "low". Crypto Secure does not decide whether to reject a specific crypto merchant. It is up to the card issuers to make that choice.
Mastercard already uses similar technology to stop fraud in transactions using fiat money. Crypto Secure is expanding such functionality to include bitcoin and other virtual currencies. By introducing custody services for institutional clients last month, Nasdaq became the most recent reputable financial institution to follow Wall Street's embrace of cryptocurrencies.
Mastercard's Primary Competitor Visa
Additionally, Mastercard is attempting to keep up with its primary competitor Visa, which has made significant investments in the cryptocurrency industry. Visa reported that it enabled $2.5 billion in transactions using cards connected to accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges during the company's first fiscal quarter of 2022.
Visa established a crypto advising practice the previous year to help clients with everything from implementing cryptocurrency functionality to investigating non-fungible tokens.
