Mastercard Obtains Two Crypto Patents to Estimate Money Laundering Risk Before Transactions Are Sent

BlockBeats news, November 6, according to South Korean media Digital Asset, documents disclosed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office show that Mastercard obtained two U.S. patents on November 3 local time, respectively covering "digital asset transaction preprocessing" and "private transaction processing methods and systems." The former analyzes the historical on-chain behavior of both payer and payee before the actual transfer, and calculates changes in the sender's own risk score under the assumption that the transaction is completed, so users can decide whether to proceed; the latter processes transactions within a private group composed of approved participants, with a central approval system verifying balances and authorization, preventing double spending and unauthorized outflows without publicly disclosing details.

The report said Mastercard believes that on-chain counterparty identity and reputation are difficult to verify, and mistakenly transacting with wallets involved in money laundering or terrorist financing may trigger regulatory scrutiny, asset freezes, and other risks; the common feature of the two technologies is ex-ante risk control and constraints on information disclosure and approval authority. Mastercard released its Stablecoin Security service for stablecoin payments on October 19, and it is not yet clear whether this batch of patents will be directly incorporated into that product.