Mastercard acquires CipherTrace to boost crypto security and compliance

Payment services company Mastercard has acquired blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace to bolster its own cyber security tools and to better comply with crypto regulatory guidelines, according to an announcement on Thursday. The amount offered for the acquisition remains undisclosed. 

“With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem comes the need to ensure it is trusted and safe,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard, in the statement. “Our aim is to build upon the complementary capabilities of Mastercard and CipherTrace to do just this.”

In addition to gathering data in the crypto space, CipherTrace publishes yearly reports about the trends in the crypto ecosystem and has built compliance tools for decentralized exchanges. 

CipherTrace, however, has a smaller influence in the blockchain surveillance arena than firms Chainalysis or Elliptic. According to data compiled by The Block Research, CipherTrace brings in 0.67% and 9.21% of federal contract payments compared to Chainalysis and Elliptic respectively.