Fintech Cardstream has partnered with Mastercard to enable its customers to offer Open Banking payments to merchants and retailers across the UK, enhancing Cardstream’s white-label payment facilitation-as-a-service (PFaaS) platform.
By partnering with Mastercard, acquirers, payment facilitators, and payment channels using Cardstream will be able to offer their merchant customers the option to accept Open Banking payments, alongside traditional forms of payments, such as debit and credit cards.
The new solution supports single immediate payments and helps businesses and consumers in the UK prepare for commercial variable recurring payments (cVRPs), which are due to rollout across Europe and the UK later this year.
CVRPs will allow people to pay for recurrent bills directly from their bank account.
The platform is built on Mastercard’s Open Banking technology, enabling “seamless” bank connectivity, while Cardstream’s PFaaS and gateway technology processes, collects, and disburses Open Banking transactions to merchants.
Adam Sharpe, chief executive officer of Cardstream, said: “There’s strong demand for Open Banking payments as a secure and convenient way to pay alongside cards.
“We’ve long collaborated with Mastercard on innovations like network tokenization and Click to Pay, and we’re excited to offer a turnkey solution that lets payment providers launch branded Open Banking Merchant Services quickly.”
Valerie Nowak, executive vice president, head of Open Banking, APEMEA at Mastercard, said the Open Banking market is set for significant growth in Europe.
“Our commitment is to foster an innovative, accessible, and secure payments ecosystem,” Nowak added.
“By empowering Cardstream, we can support both issuing and acquiring customers with a comprehensive Open Banking solution and thereby enhance payment choice for their customers.”
Mastercard Open Banking Services UK is one of 31 firms from across Open Banking and payments that have committed to fund the creation of a new company that will take forward the initial phase of cVRP, as announced by Open Banking Limited last week.
Further reading: Mastercard reveals top Open Banking use cases among businesses, consumers
