Mastercard Bags Data Storage System Patent That Explores IOTA’s Tangle for Payment

In what could turn out to be an incredible adoption potential, Mastercard Asia/Pacific (APAC) on Aug 20 received a patent from the European Patent Office describing a “method and system for device micropayment aggregation based on the Tangle network” that was initially filed in February 2019. While not explicitly mentioning IOTA, the most popular blockless distributed ledger technology (DLT) whose centerpiece is the Tangle, the approval is exciting for IOTA supporters especially since the authors: Fang Hui, Huang Donghao, and Joyson Bensam, emphasized the “Tangle” albeit mentioning the blockchain as an alternative.

From what could be gleaned, the data storage system and aggregation mentioned by Mastercard APAC route transactions—including user credentials, through a hardware device and device controller–as input, to a data storage system. Without being overly optimistic, the patent isn’t an express indicator that Mastercard APAC will use IOTA despite the “Tangle” and “IOTA” being interchangeable.

Timeline of Iota