Mastercard, Swoo Pay Begin Work To Offer Crypto-Based Loyalty Rewards: Details

While nations around the world are taking a slow and calculated approach to crypto engagement, fintech giants like Mastercard and Visa are already incorporating pro-crypto steps as part of their operations. In a new development, Mastercard has started work around the launch of crypto-based loyalty rewards. The payments giant has reportedly decided to work with Swoo Pay, a mobile payments app focused on emerging markets. Crypto culture around the world seems to be gaining momentum and this could act as a push factor for fintech giants like Mastercard to explore the possibilities of integrating services with Web3.

Mastercard and Swoo Pay will work together to drive a culture of crypto-based loyalty rewards in emerging economies – where people, despite having access to Mastercard and Visa cards, do not have access to Google Pay. Swoo users in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines and Indonesia receive Swoo Tokens as a reward when they make payments through the app. These tokens can either be converted into other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and USD Coin or into fiat currencies.

As part of this initiative, Mastercard will serve as the ultimate backer of Swoo tokens, a Coindesk the report says.

“Swoo Pay solves the problems of tokenized payments for Android users by making them more accessible. Our collaboration is designed to provide additional innovative incentives for Swoo users when making everyday purchases,” the report quoted a Mastercard executive commenting on the development.

Swoo is also looking to target this Mastercard-powered crypto loyalty rewards initiative in areas where Chinese-made Huawei smartphones are popular with people. Due to US government sanctions, Google services such as Pay are not available on these phones.

“Through Swoo’s contactless payments and crypto rewards, millions of users in emerging markets will be introduced to the crypto ecosystem,” a report by CoinTelegraph quoted by Swoo co-CEO Philip Shubin.

Meanwhile, Mastercard has taken several steps to experiment with cryptocurrencies. The company has already partnered with crypto exchanges including Binance, Nexo and Gemini to offer crypto-related payment cards in some countries.

To make blockchain-based financial ecosystems secure, scalable and interoperable — Mastercard is creating a “Multi-Token Network (MTN)”.