Mastercard Moves to Bring Real-Time Account-to-Account Transfers to B2B Payments

Momentum for real-time payments in the United States picked up Monday as Mastercard Inc. announced it is adding account-to-account (A2A) payments functionality to its Track Business Payment Service.

The new capability, which is rolling out in the United States and will be available globally by year-end 2021, allows companies to facilitate business-to-business payments across multiple payment rails, including real time payments and the automated clearing house in the United States, as well as exchange data. Cross-border payments are on the roadmap for next year, Mastercard says.

Mastercard’s Track Business Payment Service enables B2B suppliers to automate payments without sharing sensitive bank-account information with buyers or have buyers store that data. About 80% of mid-size and large suppliers view sharing of bank-account data as a business risk, Mastercard says. 

“Today, the vast majority of B2B payments are made through bank account transfers,” James Anderson, Mastercard’s executive vice president of global commercial and B2B solutions, says in a prepared statement. “Extending Mastercard Track Business Payment Service to support these transfers is a step on our way to building out the best and most secure B2B payment network in the world.”

Anderson hails the new service as a milestone in Mastercard’s transformation toward a fully digitized business-payments processing capability.

What Mastercard calls its multi-rail strategy is part of a plan to transform the company from a consumer card network into a player in a non-card and real-time payments. Ajay Banga, Mastercard’s chief executive of Mastercard Inc., and who will be stepping down from his post in January, has been the driving force behind the strategy.

In May, Mastercard announced the commercial launch of its Track Business Payment Service for U.S. card payments, enabling businesses to pay and get paid through new distribution partners around the world.