The giant credit company just joined the cryptocurrency world by making a patent application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The title of the patent is “Information Transaction Infrastructure,” was filed on sometime in January, but it took until August 3rd for USPTO to approve the application and publish it on their website.

The primary purpose of these patent is to explore ways to refund cryptocurrency users. The patent also shows Vladimir Goloshchuk, a former senior analyst at Mastercard and current CEO of Brightest Minds research firm, as the only person involved in the invention of this new system. It is unclear what will Mr Goloshchuk’s involvement will be with the credit card giant now that he is no longer associated with the company.

It is a long way to refund

Regardless of the relation between the creator and Mastercard, the patent brings forward an interesting concept. The application explains the working of an infrastructure in which users can verify their identities through the creation of a new wallet. The wallet will work as an account that is linked to the coin address they elect to reveal. The reason for Mastercard to create this system is pretty simple, refunds.

If someone is making a payment from a crypto wallet associated with an exchange, mining pool, cloud mining, or any other related service, their funds might be combined with payments from other customers for simplicity. That means that if a merchant has to return the money, the exchange or website will be forced to look for the funds’ origin. That is, mainly, so the company where the wallet resides can guarantee that their services are not financing money laundering or any other illicit activity. This method creates a giant inconvenience and longer delays.

We can make it faster

Here is where Mastercard proposal comes into play. There will be a shared service that will smooth the refund process and shorten delays. A Mastercard representative talked with Coindesk and explained it in further detail.

“The basic principle of the arrangement is that a user of the shared wallet service has two types of wallet. Firstly, they have a ‘public’ wallet for on-the-chain publicly visible and verified transactions. The user will make and receive cryptocurrency payments external to the shared wallet service using a public wallet. Using this approach the refund problem can be addressed – payment received from the public wallet can be refunded by an equal payment back to the public wallet.”

The card that serves coins

Mastercard wants to be a synonym for cryptocurrency. This patent is the latest in a series of moves the company has made in the past years. Unlike its rivals, Visa and AMEX, Mastercard has acknowledged the value and the power of cryptocurrency. Their commitment is so great that the credit card giant has developed several projects which focus on blockchain technology. Last fall, Mastercard became the first of the big 3 to release a set of dedicated application program interfaces (API) that deal with the blockchain.