A patent application released last week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office indicates that MasterCard (NYSE: MA) is looking to blockchain as a possible means for easing payment settlement times, CoinDesk reported.
c rather than waiting for multiple days before credit card transactions can be verified and then paid by card issuers.
The filings indicate that the tech would help the firm keep an ongoing record of these transactions, verifying that a vendor was actually paid after a particular sale.
The data being stored would include the transaction amount, a guarantee of payment, confirmation of the payment and account profiles for the parties involved. These account profiles will also store each users's balance information, according to the application.
“By enabling the use of the guarantee with multiple payment instruments and transaction types, the guarantee may be used in more situations with a higher convenience to both consumers and merchants, which may result in merchants receiving instantaneous, guaranteed payment while maintaining a high level of consumer convenience,” the application reads.
MasterCard has repeatedly considered blockchain platforms to ease payments. Last month, the company announced it was opening up access to the blockchain tools it was developing in order to facilitate business-to-business transactions.