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Mastercard has unveiled its new “Crypto Credential” service, which aims to simplify peer-to-peer crypto transfers by replacing addresses with simple aliases.
The service announced in a May 29 press release, was already launched and allows the users of participating crypto exchanges to send and receive digital assets using a user-friendly alias. This is supposedly a less confusing alternative to the lengthy and complex alphanumerical blockchain addresses that are difficult to distinguish from one another. The company wrote in a tweet:
Mastercard Crypto Credential has gone live with its first peer-to-peer transactions! This solution not only replaces complex wallet addresses with user-friendly aliases, but also makes sending #blockchain transactions secure, transparent and accessible.
The approach
The Crypto Credential service verifies users and assigns them an alias. When users send their cryptocurrency, the software checks the validity of the alias and ensures protocol compatibility before sending the assets.
If the recipient’s address is incompatible with the assets being sent, the transaction will not be processed. This would prevent the loss of funds due to user error — a common occurrence in the crypto space. The aliases could also protect against address poisoning scams, where attackers deceive wallet users into sending coins to a similar-looking address.
As ReadWrite reported earlier this month, a cryptocurrency trader has recently fallen victim to a sophisticated “address poisoning” scam, resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars. This kind of scam sees scammers create fake accounts that mimic the last and first characters of a victim’s address.
Due to their confusing and long nature, it is common practice to only check the first and last few characters of an address before sending assets. So by interacting with the victim with similar addresses, the victim is likely to send to one of those addresses by mistake.
Currently, the Crypto Credential service is available at Bit2Me, Lirium, and Mercado Bitcoin exchanges — with a notable lack of adoption by top exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase. The service will soon roll out in Brazil, Chile, France, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Uruguay, with more European countries to be added in the future. Martin Kopacz, chief operating officer of Lirium, said:
With Mastercard Crypto Credential, we can ensure the traceability of all blockchain transactions with a higher level of compliance, while also providing an exceptional user experience.
