Mastercard and Envisible to partner on food systems visibility

Global technology company Mastercard is set to collaborate with Envisible, an ARKK Food Company joint venture, to bring visibility to food systems.

Under the new partnership, Envisible’s traceability system will be integrated with Mastercard’s blockchain-based Provenance Solution.

The Mastercard Provenance Solution helps brands to provide visibility into product journeys and offers governance capabilities to complex supply chain networks.

US-based food cooperative Topco Associates will pilot the technology to help its member-owners’ supermarkets trace the origin of seafood.

Topco provides solutions for its food industry member-owners and customers, including grocery retailers and wholesalers food service companies.

Mastercard Innovation and Startup Engagement senior vice-president Deborah Barta said: “The identity of things is becoming even more important as consumers raise demands for transparency.

“Our provenance solution leverages Mastercard’s established network capabilities, globally-scaled technology, and services, such as payments and counterfeit programmes. This allows us to deliver trust, financial inclusion and back-end efficiencies to the marketplace.”

Topco anticipates that the new technology at Food City would provide detailed information, such as ethical sourcing and environmental compliance about seafood sold at its stores.

The first species of seafood to be tracked under the new initiative will be salmon, cod and shrimp.

Envisible partner Mark Kaplan said: “We’re excited that Mastercard shares our vision and is driving consumer trust by bringing its significant expertise in using technology at scale with commercial-grade processing speeds, data flexibility and privacy, and security standards to an area that has previously been considerably opaque.”