The international payment system MasterCard plans to patent thirty in-house developments based on the distributed registers (blockchain) technology, head of the Russian Representative Office of MasterCard was quoted as saying in a media report.

The company takes to heart capabilities of the distributed registers technology and believes that it is promising in the payments sphere, Alexei Malinovsky was quoted in a report by Russian news agency Tass.

 "This is an interesting technology and we keep a close eye on developments in this sphere," he said.
"MasterCard filed applications for more than 30 patents related to use of the distributed registers technology in the payment sphere. Furthermore, there is a certain ecosystem around us that very closely monitors development in the blockchain area," Malinovsky noted.

Two blockchain-based MasterCard APIs are already available for developers. These are Blockchain Core API and Smart Contracts API, making it possible to work with smart contracts and with the distributed register.

Further to in-house developments, MasterCard also supports small companies dealing with blockchain. The payment system invested into the venture holding Digital Currency Group and it has the start-up accelerator Start Path, Malinovsky added.