Payments giant Mastercard is partnering with emerging markets-focused mobile payments app Swoo Pay to offer loyalty rewards in cryptocurrency and fill the gap left by the likes of Google in the global payments space. With the new partnership, Mastercard and Swoo will target emerging regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia, especially areas not touched by Google Pay. "This also includes users in countries with a high concentration of affordable Huawei smartphones," said Swoo co-founder Filipp Shubin.

Shubin said in an interview: "In many emerging countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines and Indonesia, there are billions of users who have Mastercard and VISA cards but cannot use Google Pay. Another issue involves Huawei's large smartphone market share. countries, Google services are not available on these phones due to U.S. government sanctions."

Shubin said Mastercard will be the ultimate supporter of Swoo tokens, which are rewards for users and can be instantly converted into other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or USDC. In the January pilot, 17,000 participants took advantage of the 5% crypto cashback program.