As we work towards our mission of making crypto part of the everyday economy, we continually run into the same challenge over and over again. Trust.
Of course, we talk about trust a lot in the context of our expertise on the Travel Rule and how it builds trust in the ecosystem by working to prevent illicit transactions between virtual asset service providers (VASPs). And based on the exponential growth we’re seeing in transaction volume on the Notabene network, we can see that the market agrees with our position here – that counterparty trust between exchanges, wallet providers, and other digital asset infrastructure player is crucial to unlocking mass adoption of crypto.
What we talk less about is trust with real people. The customers of our customers who are enthusiastically driving the widespread adoption of crypto through skyrocketing activity in stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances, and trading activity on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.
To be sure, there are trust gaps here in the end-user experience that need to be addressed. Particularly the common anxiety around sending assets with confidence, knowing that the recipient on the other end of an abstract string of characters is the intended recipient of your assets. Similar challenges have been solved in other areas (think, Venmo’s recipient confirmation flows in fintech – or even ENS aliases for self-hosted wallets), but a solution has been elusive for the most common of all use cases – users on centralized crypto exchanges.
The need to ensure trust between institutions as well as trust with end-users leaves VASPs with a challenging problem.
How can they efficiently and effectively provide regulatory compliance alongside a payment experience that provides ease of use and peace of mind to the millions of real people sending crypto transactions across the globe on a daily basis?
As of today, it remains an unsolved challenge.
This is the context in which we are so excited to announce our latest innovation, a partnership with payments leader Mastercard that brings the innovative Mastercard Crypto Credential directly to payment flows on crypto exchanges using Notabene’s industry leading Travel Rule solution. A direct integration between the two services aims to bring simplicity and enhanced safety to our already powerful crypto compliance tools.
Through a pilot program with our valued partner M2, a prominent Abu Dhabi-based virtual assets service provider (VASP) regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) within the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), Notabene will integrate Mastercard Crypto Credential into its SafeTransact platform, facilitating the secure and privacy-preserving exchange of transaction metadata for M2’s digital asset trading services.
If you are not already familiar, Mastercard Crypto Credential verifies transactions among consumers and businesses using blockchain networks, providing the assurance that a user has met a set of verification standards and confirming that the recipient’s wallet supports the transferred asset. The groundbreaking solution simplifies the consumer experience by allowing crypto exchange users to send and receive crypto using simple aliases, instead of the typically long and complex blockchain addresses. And when integrated with Notabene’s SafeTransact, it also brings greater trust and certainty to crypto transactions through the exchange of metadata and Travel Rule information.
So what are our goals with this partnership?
Our success is built upon the success of our valued customers. Our goal with this partnership is to help exchanges like M2 significantly improve counterparty identification rates, ensuring higher compliance with the Travel Rule, and reduce friction in VASP-to-VASP and cross-border transactions. By employing advanced encryption and data minimization practices, this integrated solution will help ensure that sensitive information is protected while also enabling convenient and compliant transactions for M2’s customers.
In short, our aim is to showcase how VASPs and traditional financial institutions can come together to mitigate risks associated with digital asset transfers while maintaining operational simplicity for institutions and their retail customers.
We believe our collaboration with Mastercard represents a significant leap forward in making crypto transactions as safe and straightforward as traditional financial operations. By combining our expertise in crypto compliance with Mastercard's global reach and digital assets capabilities, we're setting a new standard for consumer trust in crypto payments. This partnership is not just about solving today’s compliance challenges but also lays the groundwork for further expanding the scope of secure and trusted crypto transactions.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to our partners at Mastercard and M2 for making this possible for our customers and the industry as a whole.
----
Interested in learning more about our partnership and how you can integrate Mastercard Crypto Credential into your compliant transaction authorization workflow?
Visit notabene.id/mastercard to learn more.
