Post Poloniex, Circle Hires Ex-Square Exec As Its New Chief Financial Officer
Payment services startup announced it has hired former , Boxed, and Salesforce executive Naeem Ishaq as its new CFO, Treasurer & EVP of Risk in a published March 26.
Ishaq, whose background Circle CEO describes as “noteworthy and highly relevant for Circle,” joins the company just a month after a saw it buy major cryptocurrency exchange .
“Naeem joining Circle comes at a transformative time for our company considering the recent acquisition of Poloniex, our recently introduced app Circle Invest, and continued global expansion and growth for Circle Pay and Circle Trade,” Allaire continued.
Circle had previously adopted an increasingly hands-off approach to cryptocurrency, for its wallet and exchange in December 2016.
The Poloniex acquisition appears to have kicked off a resurgence, Circle announcing the exchange’s presence will be bolstered via expansion into .
The company’s new Circle Invest app, which offers exposure to crypto assets, itself in 46 US states earlier this month.
Ishaq’s previous experience is also notable, as his former employer, payment service Square, has also become increasingly bullish on cryptocurrency via a this year.
“At this pivotal stage, we are growing from a startup to leading global company, just as crypto goes from early adopter novelty into being foundational to the future of society and the economy,” Allaire added in subtle praise for cryptocurrency’s progress.
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Mastercard has opened up their own blockchain to allow payment transactions to be carried out between selected banks and merchants, but this process uses fiat currency and not bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Quite a few companies have taken a keen interest in what blockchain technology has to offer, and one of these corporate entities is Mastercard, the massive credit card provider. Mastercard has spent the last few years developing its own blockchain, and now the as an alternative method of paying for goods and services. The major difference found in the Mastercard blockchain is that it does not use its own cryptocurrency. Instead, it uses real world money.
Mastercard Blockchain Open for Business
The Mastercard blockchain is now open for specific banks and retailers to use as a payment processing system. So far, participation in this blockchain is by invitation only. The last week has been a busy one for Fortune 500 companies and blockchain technology. IMB opened up earlier in the week. Probably the most intriguing aspect of the Mastercard blockchain is that it does not use its own cryptocurrency, which is something that even the IBM blockchain does.
Justin Pinkham, a senior vice president at Mastercard Labs, says:
We are not using a cryptocurrency, and we are not introducing a new cryptocurrency, because that introduces other challenges—regulatory, legal challenges. If you do a payment, then what we can do is move those funds in the way that we do today in fiat currency.
Why the Mastercard Blockchain Could be Very Successful
Some people may look at the and shrug, but there are some factors in why it could be very successful. The first such reason is that Mastercard is lord and master of a vast financial empire, so to speak. It has a settlement network that counts 22,000 banks and financial institutions from all over the world. Few other entities have such a global reach. Another important factor is that the Mastercard blockchain only uses fiat currency, which reduces costs as there’s no need to convert one form of cryptocurrency into another and then, eventually, cash.
This reduction in cost is also amplified by reducing fees for cross-border payments. Normally, a payment that crosses national borders would have to pass through different sovereign banks, racking up fees with each step. The Mastercard blockchain would remove those steps entirely, thus making the payment less expensive and probably faster. Eventually, Mastercard’s blockchain could be used for other items, such as luxury goods to provide “proof of provenance.”
Overall, this is an interesting development. Could the lack of a cryptocurrency tie-in fire a shot across the bow of other blockchains? One also wonders how the energy use for a single transaction on the Mastercard blockchain compares to current credit card transactions and bitcoin. A Dutch bank that the average energy cost for a bitcoin transaction was 200kWh, and the cost for an Ethereum transaction was 37kWh. By comparison, a credit card transaction only incurred an energy cost of 0.01kWh.
Do you think the Mastercard blockchain will have a major impact? Does the fact that it does not use a cryptocurrency have long-lasting ramifications? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay, and Flickr.
