Mastercard enhances cross-border capabilities with acquisition of Transfast

Mastercard has announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Transfast, a global cross-border account-to-account money transfer network. Mastercard says that Transfast will complement its range of payment solutions by increasing worldwide connectivity in the account-to-account space, enhancing compliance capabilities and offering more robust foreign exchange tools. Transfast currently supports the Mastercard Send solution for business-to-business and person-to-person payment services.

When businesses send cross-border payments to their vendors and partners, they face higher costs, compliance requirements, and limited predictability of when the transaction will be completed. The combination of Mastercard and Transfast will offer applications that solve these challenges and provide greater transparency and certainty in such transactions.

It will also support financial institutions, digital platforms and other partners as they provide people and businesses the ability to send and receive money how and when they want to virtually any end point across more than 100 markets.

Prior to this announcement, Mastercard lapsed its offer for Earthport in order to focus on the integration and expansion of Transfast. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The transaction, which is anticipated to close in the second half of 2019, is subject to customary closing conditions.