Mastercard CFO: Lack of Crypto Wallet Funding Is Partly Why Cross-Border Transaction Growth Is In Decline 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
Mastercard CFO: Lack of Crypto Wallet Funding Is Partly Why Cross-Border Transaction Growth Is In Decline
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Updated: Mar. 24, 2020 at 7:01 am UTC
Photo by Mike Kononov on Unsplash
Quarterly cross-border transaction growth for Mastercard declined by 2% over the last year partly due to the lack of customers using the service to purchase cryptocurrencies, according to Mastercard’s CFO.
During the May earnings call, Mastercard’s CFO Martina Hund-Mejean revealed that quarterly cross-border transaction growth for the company is down by 2% from the first quarter.
Hund-Mejean has attributed this lack of cross-border payment growth to drop in crypto-wallet funding. The Mastercard CFO highlighted the role of cryptocurrencies in the growth slowdown in a recent earnings call:
“This is due to the recent drop-off in crypto wallet funding. We expect cross-border growth to moderate somewhat.”
A number of banks across America, including JP Morgan and Bank of America, have recently moved to ban credit card transactions to cryptocurrencies. This ban has, in turn, caused a domino effect with smaller banks like Capital One and Citigroup following their lead, potentially contributing to the decline in crypto wallet funding transactions.
Mastercard Stock Maintains Steady Climb
Despite this slight dip in growth, Mastercard stock continues to climb with a 3% gain after the reported profits beat Wall Street expectations with price trading at $186.48.
While the short-term effect caused by the lack of crypto purchasing through the platform has marginally decreased cross-border transaction growth, cryptocurrency based card vendors are primed to assist the payment platform in establishing a strong presence in the cryptocurrency sector — should Mastercard choose to support it.
While such integration would provide greater usability for cryptocurrencies in allowing users to transact with any preexisting merchants, Mastercard appears to have no interest in taking part in this level of the financial sector.
During the earnings call Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga illustrated his concerns about the erratic nature of the crypto market stating:
“This is not something we count on because we just don’t know how to predict it or we don’t even want to count it.”
Mastercard cryptocurrency debit cards are not a new concept — companies such as Wirex, CoinsBank and Wagecan current support Mastercard transactions with varying fee structures. However, this segment of cryptocurrency market has been anything but stable.
Shifting Policy Causes Investors to Seek Other Channels
This unexpected turn of events has eroded the market’s trust in such platforms to
provide reliable and consistent service until further financial frameworks are established.
Additionally, the recent growth of Bitcoin-enabled ATMs and point of sales have brought into question the place of such systems within the economic framework, as most charge excess fees to access the Mastercard network.
As cryptocurrencies continue to grow, consumer gateways will continue to be an invaluable asset to enable investors to conduct daily transactions with fiat merchants.
Whether this occurs through widespread adoption of crypto-powered point of sale systems or the implementation of crypto-enabled payment gateways such as Mastercard depends heavily on whether these financial services decide to embrace cryptocurrencies moving forward.
