Mastercard dropped out of the competitive bidding with rival Visa for Earthport and announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Transfast, a competitor account-to-account money transfer network.
Mastercard ditches Earthport bid
Transfast will also complement Mastercard 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.
“We believe Transfast gives us the strongest platform to immediately enhance our cross-border capabilities and further deliver on our strategy,” said Michael Miebach, chief product officer for Mastercard.
“The addition of Transfast adds to our leading position in meeting business, government and consumer payments needs – whether B2B, P2P or other flows. Today’s news cements our collaboration and sets the stage to provide our customers a unique, ready-to-go solution upon closing.”
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, they say, will offer applications that solve these challenges and provide greater transparency and certainty in such transactions.
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