Mastercard strikes partnership with CleverCards and Thrive for expansion of digital payments adoption
With the increase in digital payments across the globe in the wake of the pandemic, a growing number of fintechs are partnering with global card networks, disrupting the historic dominance of banks in commercial payments.
In the latest news, Mastercard has partnered with CleverCards in Europe and Thrive in Australia.
In the former, Mastercard and CleverCards teamed up to expand digital cards adoption in Europe. Building on its partnership with the Mastercard in 2019, CleverCrads will be integrating Mastercard processing and services capabilities into its platform.
According to the press release, this would “simplifies the payments value chain, enabling businesses to bypass several intermediary cards issuing processes and instead easily send a digital prepaid Mastercard card directly to an email address or mobile phone number”. The card recipients of the digital card can instantly spend their funds online or use it via digital wallets such as Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay for contactless payments.
CleverCards has also joined the Mastercard Fintech Express programme.
In the latter partnership, Mastercard and Thrive partnered to introduce Thrive Mastercard Debit cards for SMBs. This would be launched later this year and as a part of SME business banking account. The company is also launching its business accounts which uses API to automate banking, accounting, tax and lending for SMEs.
“Mastercard has become the de facto choice for fintechs who are looking to disrupt the status quo,” said Ben Winford, Co-founder & COO of Thrive. The service would also include automated spend categorisation, reconciliation, cash flow forecasting and tax predictions.