The two big card networks have made no bones about their interest in supporting cryptocurrency transactions, and this week both made big moves in that direction. The bigger move came from Mastercard Inc., which on Wednesday announced its intention to launch later this year the ability to send and receive crypto transactions natively on the company’s network.
Then, on Friday, Visa Inc. made a more modest announcement welcoming a blockchain startup called GreenBox POS into its Fintech Fast Track program. The move gives San Diego-based GreenBox access to the massive VisaNet backbone network for a cobranded Visa card for push-to-card payments.