Mastercard Applies for Public Blockchain Patent

Disrupting industries worldwide, blockchain integration is finally making its way into the mainstream - attracting even the most established companies as a solution to structural inefficiencies.

Announced on June 8th, 2018, Mastercard applied for patents to use a public blockchain.

As a solution to payment friction, network validation, and peer-to-peer exchange, blockchain technology has proved a powerful application to countless industries.

Payments giant Mastercard applied for patents to use a public blockchain for payment card validation and a travel itinerary bidding system.

Facing the $2 billion issue of stolen credit card payments, Mastercard aims to reduce susceptibility to "Skimming" - using a counterfeit card reader to steal payment credentials - through the integration of a public blockchain.

Released on June 8th, the patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveals Mastercard's potential plan to store encoded payment credentials on a public blockchain and use conveyance and retrieval methods to validate each payment card upon the point of sale.

"A method for retrieval of payment credentials from a third party data source, comprising: reading, by an input device of a point of sale device, a machine-readable code displayed by a computing device; decoding, by a decoding module of the point of sale device, the machine-readable code to identify at least a public key wherein the publicly accessible data source is a blockchain network."

In addition to payment card verification, Mastercard also won a patent for a system of itinerary bidding based on a blockchain network.

In application, the system allows travelers to submit their itineraries to a public blockchain where the information is broadcast to hotels, airlines, and other travel services that can then respond to travelers with bids for reservation requests.

"The use of a blockchain can ensure that a traveler's desired travel itinerary is publicly accessible to each merchant that is capable of bidding on the itinerary As a result, travelers save both time and money with respect to their travel itinerary, and travel providers are provided with greater opportunities to earn and increase revenue."