Other senior roles Mastercard is looking to fill also mention expertise in the blockchain tech, for example, vice president of network tech product management, director of payments platform and networks, senior analyst for strategic program management and others.
Payments giant Mastercard is seeking to hire a number of blockchain professionals, including several senior roles, in an apparent effort to develop cryptocurrency and wallet products.
According to the company’s career website, Mastercard is looking for a senior blockchain engineer and engineering lead, director for product development and innovation, vice president for product management and director of product management for cryptocurrency and wallets.
The director of product management for cryptocurrency and wallets, according to the description, will be expected to “lead the ideation, definition, design, and development of innovative crypto currency solutions, including wallet solutions”, and have an experience in this field.
Along with the director for product development and innovation, vice president for product management, the wallet director is in charge of Mastercard’s patent portfolio and filing new patent applications. Other than that, there are few specifics about the new role, but the job description speaks of the crypto industry quite favorably, asking a potential candidate:
“Do you have the courage to look into the eyes of disruptive forces without fear, and maneuver them to your advantage?
Do you have the desire to work at the cutting-edge intersection of payments and crypto-currencies?
Do you have the ambition to build something which you can narrate to your grandchildren?”
If the answer is yes – Mastercard is the right place for such a candidate, the description suggests.
The new leadership team is further supposed to advocate blockchain concepts within Mastercard itself. According to the description of the director’s and VP positions, they will need to “establish shared vision across the company by influencing and building consensus among the various stakeholders.”
Mastercard is a member of the Libra Association – a loose cross-industry consortium tentatively supporting the launch of Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency, Libra. Facebook itself is now actively recruiting personnel for its native wallet, Calibra, but has pledged to allow free competition of wallets inside of the Libra ecosystem during the House and Senate hearings in July.
Korean Internet Giant Kakao Teases Its Crypto Wallet for 50M Users
South Korean internet giant Kakao Corp has launched a teaser page for its forthcoming cryptocurrency wallet, Klip.
According to a report from News1 Korea on Aug. 12, Kakao has made the wallet teaser page available as part of the “More” tab on its messaging app KakaoTalk – the platform into which the real wallet will eventually be integrated.
50 million active users will have access to the wallet
The Klip wallet – developed by Kakao’s blockchain subsidiary, GroundX, will allow users to store the Klaytn they earn online. With a focus on supporting applications such as finance, content creation and blockchain-powered games, the wallet will also reportedly support non-fungible tokens.
Alongside Klaytn, Klip is also expected to support tokens that are partner to the company’s proprietary Klaytn mainnet, which went live in June of this year.
The teasing page currently displays the logos of partner tokens Airbloc, Pebble and Spin Protocol, News1 Korea notes.
With 50 million global KakatoTalk users as of June 2019, GroundX CEO Han Jae-Sun has emphasized that the decision to integrate the wallet into the popular messaging app was a matter of maximizing cryptocurrency accessibility.
According to an unnamed Kakao official, the Klip wallet is expected to launch in the second half of this year.
As reported at the time of the Klaytn mainnet launch, the firms using Kakao’s mainnet are said to have a combined market value of $64.8 billion. By October of this year, Kakao is aiming to have as many as 34 decentralized apps (DApps) supported on the platform.
Regulatory arbitrage
This March, Kakao indicated it would repeat its initial coin offering (ICO) for Klaytn after netting $90 million from investors. In December 2018, Kakao had first announced that it was planning to raise around $300 million through Ground X to develop its own token.
GroundX – which operates the ICO – is notably headquartered in Japan, in light of South Korea’s strict anti-ICO policy.
