Contis joins Mastercard in Europe
With lower costs and superior technology, non-bank payments firms have caught the eye of card network giants. Seeing traditional bank commercial card issuers outstripped by the upstarts, the giants are seeking a piece of the action.
This week, UK based payments solution provider, Contis has partnered with Mastercard to become a principal issuing member. Under this, Contis plans to deliver an end-to-end Banking as a service (BaaS) platform which includes direct access to both payments networks.
This year, another UK-based fintech, Tide, had partnered with Mastercard to become a principal issuer while Modulr became a principal issuer with Visa.
In the press release, Contis mentions that it is Brexit-ready as it has moved its ‘entire EEA client-base to its European entity and [is] migrating a million customers to new cloud-native data centres in London and Amsterdam’. It has also added some more functionality into its platform with open banking, international currency conversion and cardless cash delivery.
“With Mastercard’s significant presence across the EEA and collaborative approach to fintech, Contis will further embed itself into Europe’s critical financial infrastructure”, the press release noted.
The platform integration work will start immediately and plans to go live on the Mastercard Network by Q2 2021.