Mastercard plans to hire 500 more cryptocurrency experts, with the goal of assisting banks with cryptocurrency adoption.

Mastercard has expanded its payment-focused consulting services to include Open Banking, Open Data, Crypto, and digital currencies.

Mastercard's consulting services are part of the company's overall offering, which now includes over 2,000 data scientists, engineers, and consultants. As digital assets and cryptocurrencies gain in popularity, more institutions and private firms are attempting to incorporate the technology into their operations. This is why Mastercard intends to hire 500 more consultants to expand its consultancy services.

 As part of its data and services unit's expansion goals, Mastercard Inc. expects to hire around 500 young workers this year.

Mastercard, the world's largest payment processor, is considering expanding into the cryptocurrency market. As a result, the company intends to expand its advisory services to include new practises focusing on open banking, open data, crypto, and digital currencies, as well as Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG).

Adoption of Digital Currencies: A Guide

According to the official press release, Mastercard's consulting efforts are aimed at assisting financial institutions in navigating the adoption of cryptocurrencies by enabling banks and merchants to cover a wide range of digital currency capabilities.

This will include early-stage education, risk assessments, the development of bank-wide crypto and NFT strategies, as well as the design of crypto loyalty programmes. As part of the company's ambitious growth goals, Data & Services, which also serves as a talent incubator, is looking to hire more than 500 college graduates and young professionals.

Mastercard has so far cultivated relationships with crypto-focused businesses and aided the spread of financial technology firms into new countries. One of the payment company's key goals is to assist central banks in using its testing platform for design exploration and central bank digital currency deployment (CBDC).

Mastercard's expertise in payment systems, policy and regulation, and governance might be used through the platform, allowing central banks to evaluate potential frameworks before deploying them.

Including Bitcoin in Its Network

Mastercard has taken a number of initiatives to incorporate blockchain and cryptocurrencies into its business model. The corporation said in 2021 that it will begin directly supporting select digital properties on its network.

Without elaborating on its position on cryptocurrencies, Mastercard noted that customers, merchants, and organisations had the "option" to "transfer digital value, traditional or crypto, whatever they wish."

Later that year, it announced support for credit and debit cards backed by cryptocurrencies in the APAC area, allowing customers to pay for products and services with their digital assets in the same way they would with fiat money.

Mastercard recently teamed with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to make purchasing non-fungible tokens (NFT) easier. The company also teamed up with ConsenSys, the top Ethereum software startup, to launch EVM blockchain roll-ups.

Conclusion

Mastercard is the world's largest payments company and one of the first to embrace digital payments. Mastercard has been a significant supporter of decentralised finance and digital assets in general, particularly NFTs, since the fast rise of the cryptocurrency industry.