Mastercard in their first quarter earnings call reported a loss of transactions. The company explained this negative dynamics by a ban imposed by several banks on buying cryptocurrencies via credit cards.
The banks that initiated this ban were trying to fight money laundering and prevent conversion of stolen credit cards into cryptocurrency. In reality this decision turned into material losses not only for Mastercard but other companies, too.
Martina Hund-Mejean - Finance Director of Mastercard
“The issue is that a number of the banks have decided, in particular in the United States, that they would not allow the usage of cards for this particular funding vehicle. And that's why we have already seen a relatively significant decrease of the volume related to that event.”
She also underlined that cross-border volumes grew 19% globally down 2 % sequentially in part due to the drop of crypto wallet funding.
The CEO of Mastercard Ajay Banga pointed out concerns in the Asian market about crypto exchanges.
“There's a lot of concerns even in Japan because one of their biggest exchanges got hacked into and has now been bought out by another company in an effort to bring that back to an even keel.”
By Nadya Astam