Sending crypto has often felt like navigating a maze — long strings of letters and numbers, zero room for error, and a lack of reassurance that your funds will go where they should. This confusion and hesitancy can breed distrust, creating a barrier to widespread adoption of digital assets.

That prompted Mastercard to launch its Crypto Credential solution, bringing simple, verified aliases to crypto exchange wallets and a growing network of trusted users. This eliminates the need to remember long and complex blockchain addresses or know which assets or chains are supported by the person they’re sending their funds to, and creates peace of mind that Mastercard’s identity verification standards help ensure that the money is not being used for potentially illegal or illicit activities.

Now Mastercard, together with Mercuryo, the global payments infrastructure platform, and leading blockchain network Polygon Labs, is extending Mastercard Crypto Credential to include self-custody wallets. Unlike with wallets on centralized exchanges, self-custody wallets allow users to maintain full control of their private keys and digital assets, but also places upon them the onus of securing and protecting their assets themselves, with no recourse if a crypto payment accidentally goes astray.

Mastercard Crypto Credential will make self-custody wallet transactions more intuitive and less prone to error — strengthening security, boosting choice and, perhaps most crucial, fortifying trust in the digital assets ecosystem.

Mercuryo will be the first issuer to onboard self-custody users into the ecosystem, and Polygon Labs will be the first native blockchain network to support Crypto Credential, including the ability to request a Soulbound token — a non-transferable digit asset linked to a users' self-custody blockchain address to show they’re verified.

The Mastercard Newsroom spoke to three crypto leaders behind the expansion — Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s head of blockchain and digital assets, Aishwary Gupta, global head of payments, exchanges and real-world assets for Polygon Labs, and Petr Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO of Mercuryo, about the challenges of secure identity verification and how this expansion creates a safer, more compliant and user-friendly Web3 experience.

Dhamodharan: While we’ve been on our digital assets journey for years, we recognize that there’s still more to be done to make interacting with them more accessible, secure and trustworthy for everyone. By expanding Mastercard Crypto Credential to support self-custody wallets, we’re both simplifying transactions and building more confidence in the ecosystem — with the goal of making it as seamless and secure as any other financial experience. This is key to driving broader adoption and responsible innovation in Web3.

Kozyakov: Our philosophy is to build products at the intersection of compliance and the best user experience, and I think this service reflects exactly that. With the same familiar flow users rely on to buy crypto with Mercuryo, they now gain additional tools to verify information and be more compliant and transparent on-chain. Immediately users will be able to work with services that ask them to verify their identities or provide some additional details really easily, without additional steps.

Gupta: We talked to a couple of banks, a lot of fintechs across the world, and one of the things that is very much on their radar is once we go borderless — because effectively blockchains and stablecoins, they all make everyone borderless — the rules and regulations are still not borderless. Compliance is very important for all these companies we are now talking to, and because this is important to them, it is important for Polygon Labs. When you’re onboarding businesses, they need to still follow the same set of rules that have been set up in various jurisdictions irrespective of the blockchain being borderless. 

Kozyakov: With this interface, the more you have intersections with fiat, the more compliance you need. This is the essential part — having more transparency on-chain and being the first credential issuer is a big step towards in our belief that self-custody wallets at some point, will be fully compliant with Web2 financial standards.

Dhamodharan: We needed to ensure that self-custody wallet transactions could be both secure and user-friendly. Since self-custody places the responsibility for asset protection entirely on the user, it was critical for us to build a solution that minimized errors and made the experience as straightforward as possible. We also had to navigate the complexities of global regulatory frameworks — as Aishwary said, while the landscape historically operates borderlessly, regulations do not. We had already built Crypto Credential to comply with both Travel Rule requirements and Financial Action Trask Force recommendations, because we knew we had to support them all while still empowering users with the control they crave. Achieving this required close collaboration with our partners and a relentless focus on our principles for blockchain technology, which prioritize strong consumer protections, a level playing field and full compliance.

Kozyakov: Moving money from user wallets to Web2 infrastructure and then to fiat infrastructure is still really tough today. Mercuryo is actually building the bridge between these two worlds. It's about aligning on standards and data handling practices. So it requires really thoughtful planning and collaboration.

Gupta: Effectively, when you create a self-custody wallet account, there is no identity attached to it. So it is anonymous account, which is out there in the wild and there is no way for you to verify or ensure that the money coming in actually passed through some of the required checks when someone is receiving the money.

So imagine, let’s say a travel booking company takes a booking from a wallet that is coming from a sanctioned nation. If there have been no checks conducted on it, you would not realize that. There is software that can go out and highlight that this flow is not coming from a legitimate source, but this is something that happens post-facto. The Soulbound token can effectively be used as a pre-facto check. The travel booking company can embed this into their system. It enables them to have a screening before allowing people to complete a booking. It actually empowers them. 

Gupta: For the last year, our team at Polygon Labs has been seeing a lot of partners who are serious about getting on chain, and the biggest challenge that they’re facing is the need to figure out compliance, how effectively they can go and help their finance team, help their compliance team, their AML check team, their sanctions team, be okay with what they are receiving. So effectively, this plays a pivotal role in having those credentials created and embedded it into their own systems. That’s where the most value comes in.

Kozyakov: Moving towards self-custody is the direction that we will see more and more in the next three, five, ten years. The only question is how quickly that can happen. When will we see crypto being used for everyday payments? The answer to that question lies in the user experience. Is it safe? Is it secure? That’s why we’re truly excited about this partnership. 

Dhamodharan: For years, we’ve seen the value in linking traditional cards to crypto, including self-custody wallets. This brings crypto payments into the financial mainstream, grounded by existing payment infrastructure and the trust and protection that consumers and businesses expect from us. At the end of the day, bridging the gap between traditional finance and Web3 isn’t just about technology — it’s about trust. When transparency and protections are built in from the start, crypto payments can become as simple and reliable as any other form of payment. That’s how blockchain technology will earn its place in everyday life — where everyone can confidently choose crypto as just another way to pay.