See Steemit for a list of the Mastercard-related Bitcoin cards.

What to make of this?

Mastercard is making moves that clearly position it to benefit from the current, and projected growth with cryptocurrencies. Still, Banga continues to come out against one of the biggest cryptos – Bitcoin – by calling it junk and a bubble.

People are starting to wake up and see what’s behind the logic of these gurus, especially those in finance. These traditional finance folks stand to lose a lot of money as cryptocurrencies continue to grow, and take away their market share.

As the tide continues to turn so that Bitcoin, and the many offshoots of it are more accepted, the beefs these naysayers have will be scrutinized even more. Perhaps then they’ll treat this new-fangled way to buy and sell things as more than junk and bubble, and instead look at them as what they really are – a finance force to be reckoned with, and not ridiculed.

Legitimizing crypto-relate product

At the beginning of the year, Mastercard filed a patent application related to a cryptocurrency project it has in the works.

Specifically, it is seeking a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a project called Information Transaction Infrastructure. The thought is Mastercard wants to build a system that facilitates the refund of monies for purchases made with cryptocurrency.

Mastercard states in its application that the basic principle of the arrangement is that a user of the shared wallet service has two types of wallet. Firstly, they have a "public" wallet on-the-chain publicly visible and verified transactions. The user will make and receive cryptocurrency payments external to the shared wallet service using a public wallet.

Using this approach, the refund problem can be addressed--a payment received from the public wallet can be refunded by an equal payment back to the public wallet.