Today Bakkt announced a broad partnership with Mastercard, which involves the card company adding Crypto-as-a-Service, the ability to offer cryptocurrency services to its bank and fintech partners powered by Bakkt. Additionally, through Bakkt’s loyalty solutions, Mastercard clients can offer cryptocurrencies as rewards and rewards points can be exchanged for cryptocurrencies.
Bakkt is the digital assets startup that was spun off by NYSE owner ICE. In January, it was announced that Bakkt would list through a merger of the Victory Park Capital SPAC, with the final listing happening last week. The stock price dropped to $8 on Thursday but is above $15 this morning.
This is a relatively big step for Mastercard, which had adopted a more conservative stance towards digital assets until now. In February, we compared the different approaches of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. Mastercard has provided cryptocurrency cards to clients of cryptocurrency exchanges for some time, and this new deal extends that beyond exchanges.
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