Mastercard Advances Multi-Rail Strategy to Modernize Business Payments

Mastercard continues to deliver on its multi-rail strategy with the addition of Account-to-Account (A2A) payments functionality to Mastercard Track Business Payment Service.

This launch represents the next phase in Mastercard’s journey to modernize business payments by solving persistent pain points that Buyers and Suppliers experience today. Building on the success of card payments within Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, businesses can now have a similar experience for A2A payments - exchanging data with greater efficiency and facilitating payments across multiple payment rails including Real Time Payments (RTP) and the Automated Clearing House (ACH) in the United States.

The Account-to-Account payments functionality in Track Business Payment Service is now available in the U.S. and will be available in all regions by the end of 2021. Cross-border payments are also on the roadmap for next year.

Track Business Payment Service gives businesses greater control of their payments and supports rich data exchanges and the ability to automate payments without the need to share sensitive bank account information. About 80% of mid-size and large Suppliers view the sharing of bank account data as a business risk, according to Mastercard research.¹ The risk of bank account data being compromised is reduced because Suppliers no longer need to share their confidential bank account details with Buyers, nor do Buyers need to store those details.

“Today, the vast majority of B2B payments are made through bank account transfers. Extending Mastercard Track Business Payment Service to support these transfers is a step on our way to building out the best and most secure B2B payment network in the world,” said James Anderson, Executive Vice President of Global Commercial and B2B Solutions at Mastercard. “Our commitment to supporting multiple payment rails has always been about helping customers operate more efficiently and effectively leveraging all the capabilities available in the market with as little change as possible. This milestone is another step in the journey away from paper-based frustration, incomplete data and manual reconciliation work and toward a fully digitized business payments process.”