- MasterCard, the payments technology pioneer, is all set to enter record books with the launch of a unique, innovative, first of its kind pilot blockchain program in a Gulf tertiary allowing the banking industry in facilitating a swifter as well a secured cross border payment system.
- This has thronged limelight as the company has stated that it has now partnered with Bahrain’s Electronic Network for Financial Transactions, facilitating the electronic payments for a local organization. Thus, in this way, MasterCard will, for the very first time in history ever implement blockchain on a national scale in the Middle East tertiary.
This program thus will support various lenders for sending, receiving multiple monetary-based transactions on a secure, private, and direct network using MasterCard’s cross-border B2B service. With the utilization of such a technological platform, it could support in quickening up the transactions while making it more transparent.
With the advent of this Blockchain payment program of MasterCard, all businesses will be able to accomplish all their transactions much swifter since banks will be able to directly exchange the required payment information upfront, without the need for any intermediaries, using the secured private blockchain network, thereby ensuring the payment certainty.
To bolster Bahrain Economy, this initiative has been amongst the latest steps being taken by Bahrain, flexing its muscle as a Fintech hub in the MENA tertiary. The previous year, the country opened up Bahrain Fintech Bay, a facility designed in accelerating the development of fintech along with the creation of a regulatory Sandbox allowing the Fintech companies in testing and regulation of the thought process and ideas.
Bahrain, bolstering a good GDP and economic growth, has since wooed FinTech start-ups from around the GCC for joining in their regulatory Sandbox framework. They have also been successful to a great extent, with crypto exchanges Rain and UAE’s BitOasis setting up there as a part of their expansion drive.
However, the Gulf country faces very stiff competition from the neighbouring UAE, where both Dubai and Abu Dhabi to have established a technology and Fintech hubs wooing the FinTech firms. Fintech that has amounted for 12% of all funding deals in MENA last year is showing signs of great maturity as investors pump in funds.
