Payment giant Mastercard is strengthening its position in the crypto space as it acquires CipherTrace, a leading cryptocurrency intelligence company with insight into more than 900 cryptocurrencies.
The integrated offering will build on CipherTrace’s suite of digital assets and Mastercard’s cyber security solutions to provide businesses with greater transparency to help identify and understand their risks and to help manage their digital asset regulatory and compliance obligations.
“Digital assets have the potential to reimagine commerce, from everyday acts like paying and getting paid to transforming economies, making them more inclusive and efficient,” said Ajay Bhalla, president, Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard. “With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem comes the need to ensure it is trusted and safe. Our aim is to build upon the complementary capabilities of Mastercard and CipherTrace to do just this.”
CipherTrace’s innovative platform helps customers enhance their security and fraud monitoring activities for crypto-related programs. They provide solutions for some of the largest banks, exchanges, and other financial institutions in the world due to their industry leading data analytics and algorithms to help customers convert on their opportunities across 7,000+ cryptocurrency entities.
In addition to gathering data in the crypto space, CipherTrace publishes yearly reports about the trends in the crypto ecosystem and has built compliance tools for decentralized exchanges.
“We help companies – whether they are banks or cryptocurrency exchanges, government regulators or law enforcement to keep the crypto economy safe,” said Dave Jevans, CEO, CipherTrace. “Our two companies share this vision to provide security and trust throughout the ecosystem. We are thrilled to join the Mastercard family to scale CipherTrace’s reach across the globe.”
The deal enables Mastercard to combine the technology, AI and cyber capabilities of both companies to differentiate its card and real-time payments infrastructure, allowing customers and stakeholders globally to build upon and benefit from the solutions to protect their consumers and comply with regulations, as they build their own virtual asset offerings.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the transaction is anticipated to close before the end of the year, pending certain conditions.
