Mastercard launches a new solution for commercial cross-border payments

The solution was announced during the annual Sibos conference in Beijing, with a focus on improving the efficiency, transparency, and predictability of international commercial transactions. It is designed to simplify banking operations, improve liquidity management, reduce counterparty risk, and offer comprehensive transaction visibility for both banks and their clients. 

Cross-border payments have seen significant growth, with data from McKinsey showing a double-digit increase as businesses globalise their supply chains and operations. However, many banks continue to face challenges in this area, including slow transaction times and unpredictable costs, which are passed on to their customers. Mastercard Move Commercial Payments aims to address these issues by offering a streamlined solution for commercial cross-border payments.

Main features of Mastercard Move Commercial Payments 

Some of the main features of this new solution include: 

• Near real-time payments, available 24/7 throughout the year, allowing banks to better manage corporate trade payments and treasury flows, where working capital optimisation is critical. 
• Flexible settlement options, enabling banks to optimise liquidity without affecting foreign exchange or deposit-related revenues. 
• Multilateral arrangements to minimise counterparty risk and provide near real-time certainty on transaction settlement. 
• Seamless integration with existing Swift infrastructure, enabling banks to add payment corridors and currencies at a low cost with minimal resource requirements. 
• Compatibility with correspondent banking networks, allowing large clearing banks to offer the service to their institutional clients without major changes to their current processes. 
• Additional value-added services, such as risk control measures and fraud analytics, designed to meet the specific needs of individual banks. 

In the company press release, officials from Mastercard highlighted the importance of this solution, stating that the new system will bring the speed and transparency of domestic payments to the commercial cross-border space. They added that the solution addresses existing pain points in the market, enabling banks to reduce risk and enhance their corporate offerings. 

Mastercard Move Commercial Payments has already been piloted in the UK with Lloyds Banking Group and UBS, using Fnality as the settlement venue. The pilot has demonstrated the capability to process near real-time cross-border payments around the clock. 

This new service is part of the broader Mastercard Move portfolio, which focuses on providing fast, secure money transfer solutions for individuals and businesses, both domestically and internationally.