Mastercard Sets New Direction for UK Open Banking With Currensea and Secure Trust Bank Partnerships

Mastercard continues to reinforce open banking applicability in the UK as Currensea joins Start Path and Secure Trust Bank tests the waters of open banking-powered retail finance.  

The latest Mastercard announcements with Currensea and Secure Trust Bank form a promising next step up on the ladder for UK open banking. The payments company is a regular feature in various initiatives aimed at progressing what is being described as ‘the future of finance‘.

Its company Aiia is confirmed to be processing over one million monthly open banking payments with the Finnish payments company Paytrail, while Mastercard also more recently launched the automated clearing house payment initiative ‘Pay-by-Bank’ with J. P. Morgan Payments.

But its latest announcements confirm the upward trajectory of UK open banking and Mastercard’s pivotal role within the industry.

Currensea joins Start Path

The debit-as-a-service platform Currensea is joining Mastercard’s startup engagement open banking programme Start Path. The UK open banking debit card platform allows the issuance of branded debit cards without needing a current account.

Introduced in June, Start Path’s open banking programme hosts a resource for start-ups to scale and develop open banking products. The programme advocates the benefits of collaboration and encourages co-innovation.

The programme provides fintechs with support including customer acquisition, market expansion, product development and marketing.

Currensea now has access to hands-on mentoring, co-innovation opportunities and engagement with Mastercard’s banking and merchant network.

James Lynn, CEO of Currensea, is certain that the Start Path programme will “transform our business.”

“The support will provide the tools needed to scale at pace, partnering with organisations to enable them to…issue their own branded debit cards,” continues Lynn.

“This will allow us to offer our debit-as-a-service proposition to a far wider audience.”

Secure Trust Bank partners with Mastercard

Mastercard’s second announcement reveals its new partnership with the UK-based Secure Trust Bank.

The Solihull-headquartered bank is engaging in the partnership to develop retail finance repayment solutions. This includes the use of Mastercard’s open banking technology to process account-to-account payments for its customers.

“This partnership provides customers with ways to pay back their retail finance directly from their chosen bank accounts” explains Jim Wadsworth, Mastercard’s SVP of open banking.

This solution has consequently materialised in the bank’s ‘Easy Bank Transfer’ payment option. This feature aims to cultivate wider customer convenience around retail finance repayments with open banking’s application of financial data

“It was important to choose a partner that had implemented open banking in the UK successfully,” adds Chris Higham, the bank’s head of payments and cards.

“With Mastercard’s open banking platform, we’re able to offer our customers more choice when making retail finance repayments,” follows Higham.

“Before, customers sending a payment to their account had to log online and set up a new payee. This included noting the reference number and manually typing it in. This was a slow process for them and resulted in some reconciliation errors for us.”