Payments industry supports crypto startups

Recent innovations across the payments ecosystem reflect growing interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, which power a range of solutions in banking, payments and corporate sectors. Deloitte’s 2020 Blockchain Survey revealed that leading financial service providers no longer consider blockchain to be revolutionary. Indeed, a growing number of C-suite executives are putting money and resources into blockchain projects, researchers found.

“As with any business solution, there are still real-world challenges to overcome,” Deloitte researchers wrote. “Still, in 2020, both bold and modest in-production proof points across a wide variety of implementation scenarios demonstrate that blockchain technology works – and can work – for many different organizations, businesses, and industries.”

Deloitte surveyed 1,488 executives in 14 countries with general knowledge of blockchain, digital assets and distributed ledger technologies and 100 specialists, most of whom offered positive sentiment and compelling use cases, researchers noted.

Card brand support

Business accelerators introduced by Visa and Mastercard are cultivating blockchain startups. CoinZoom, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track program in May 2021. U.S. customers can use CoinZoom’s Visa debit card to convert crypto to fiat currencies, the company stated, while noting the service will soon be available in Europe.

Terry Angelos, senior vice president and global head of fintech at Visa, pointed out that Visa’s resources are helping growing fintechs rapidly and efficiently scale. “By joining Visa’s Fast Track program, exciting Fintechs like CoinZoom gain unprecedented access to Visa experts, technology, and resources,” he said.

Mastercard Start Path is a six-month accelerator program designed for fintech startups focused on software-as-a-service, transactions and blockchain-based payments. In April 2021, Mastercard participated in a $65 million funding round for ConsenSys, a leading blockchain service provider founded by Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum.

Raj Dhamadharan, executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products at Mastercard, extolled blockchain as a valuable infrastructure with broad potential. “Our investment and partnership with ConsenSys [help] us bring secure and performant Enterprise,” he said. “Ethereum [provides] capabilities to our customers, whom we believe will benefit from a robust, open source Ethereum community to create relevant and scalable solutions.”

Fintechs helping fintechs

Deloitte researchers found numerous large-scale initiatives, such as Libra, that “have the potential to be transformational across an array of domains,” and observed that small-scale initiatives can be just as transformational.

Following are available resources and support for the growing cryptocurrency and blockchain community:

• Wallet-as-a-Service: Blockset is offering early access to its Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS), a brandable solution designed to help cryptocurrency app developers expedite time to market that includes development, integration support and professional services.

• Device support: Samsung Electronics updated Samsung Galaxy smartphones to enable blockchain users to import virtual assets stored on select cold hardware wallets to access and process transactions on the Samsung Blockchain Wallet.

• Network provisioning: Microsoft Azure offers developer tools to simplify configuring blockchain networks and infrastructure. Developers can use Azure’s Visual Studio Code to build smart contracts and connect ledger data to Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB.

As Deloitte researchers noted, numerous blockchain use cases and deployments reflect blockchain’s shift from technology experiment to true change agent for enterprises, industries and service providers.

“It is also worth noting an even larger point,” researchers wrote. “When an organization integrates a blockchain platform into its core operations, virtually everyone who supports these core operations becomes a stakeholder: the C-suite; the board of directors; internal and external auditors; legal, compliance and financial professionals; and of course everyone directly involved in the blockchain system itself.”

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