Mastercard plans make blockchain apart of its payments infrastructure.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released a new application from the financial giant this week that outlines a solution for a "uniform settlement system" – one that would help ease some of the friction involved with business-to-business payments. Specific issues stated in the app include growing data storage demands and the overall volume of transactions.
Mastercard recommends in the text the a system could include a blockchain-based ledger of transactions.
Mastercard states that the blockchain would be able to instantly note all changes made to the ledger, creating a verifiable and immutable record of all data. As a result, malicious users would be unable to adjust transactions in the system.
The entry represents the latest property play by Mastercard that invokes blockchain, in a series of applications that goes back to 2014. Most recently, in August, the USPTO released an app related to cryptocurrency-based refunds.
