As published in a leading daily The Hindu, MasterCard is planning to reinforce its operations through Blockchain Technology, and anticipates a robust regulatory framework in India that clearly defines the application areas of Blockchain.
Vice president at Mastercard, Amitabh Tewary, told The Hindu in an interview:
“There are quite a few pilots on in MasterCard on the various aspects of our business where blockchain will be useful.”
He further added:
“Blockchain is an emerging technology and like many other companies, we continue to explore the implications and opportunities in this space. We believe that there is a role [for] blockchain in the future of commerce. This future needs to be developed in partnership with banks, merchants and industry participants.”
Blockchain Technolgy in India has garnered immense interest, and there is an inter-ministerial committee to behold how best to regulate blockchain technology, if it is allowed at all. A proposal has also been put forth to let market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) govern it.
If you are still not very clear about Blockchain, you should know that it is the technology behind world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Over the past few years, the demand for Bitcoin has skyrocketed in India and abroad.
The underlying technology behind Bitcoin,i.e, Blockchain, is simply a chain of blocks in chronological order, where each block has some record (transaction data) and contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block. Blockchain Technology can serve as an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties, in a verifiable and permanent way. Once recorded, data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and agreement of the partners.
(Click here to understand-What is Blockchain?)
As per Mr. Tewary, one feasible option could be to consider bringing Blockchain regulation under the proposed Payments Regulatory Board in the RBI. The Board will have three members each from the central bank and the Center.
The company’s R&D wing, MasterCard Labs, is currently working on a network that can leverage Blockchain technology while keeping up with the requirements of a globally distributed financial network.
Mr. Tewary added:
“This platform will support a wide range of use cases, including but not exclusive to B2B inter-bank payments, tracking trade finance obligations along the value chain, exchanging KYC (Know Your Customer) or AML (Anti Money Laundering) data between trusted parties, and more.”
The anonymity associated with Bitcoins and Blockchain also led to ransomware attacks, which Mr. Tewary considers of great concern. He feels, regulation must be even more careful when legislating the use of the technology.
Despite these concerns, the technology is surely going to grow as well as the Blockchain Companies. MasterCard team is working on several pilots based on blockchain to exploit its potential.
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