Mambu and Mastercard have announced a strategic collaboration designed to help financial institutions offer faster, more secure, and more transparent cross-border payments. The partnership will connect Mastercard Move, Mastercard's portfolio of global money movement capabilities, with Mambu's Intelligent Core, a cloud-native core banking and payments platform. The result is a pre-built integration that reduces implementation complexity and accelerates time to market for banks and other financial institutions.
Collaboration Scope
Under the arrangement, Mambu customers gain access to Mastercard Move's cross-border capabilities without undertaking lengthy integration projects. The connection allows financial institutions to embed international payment functionality directly within their existing digital banking journeys, avoiding the need to replace core systems. This creates a more seamless customer experience while preserving the technology investments banks have already made.
Implementation and Time to Market
Financial institutions using Mambu will be able to integrate Mastercard Move's cross-border payment capabilities through a single pre-built connection. This approach reduces the need for custom development and long project timelines, allowing banks to focus on customer experience and product innovation. It also gives them the flexibility to continue building on their existing core banking and payments infrastructure.
Building on Payments Expansion
The collaboration extends Mambu's expansion into payments following its acquisition of Numeral in 2024. It provides a broad foundation for banks to develop cross-border payment services tailored to the changing needs of small and medium-sized enterprise and retail customers. Demand continues to grow for transparent and frictionless international payments, making the timing particularly relevant.
Executive Perspectives
Fernando Zandona, CEO at Mambu, said adding cross-border payment capabilities should not require years of integration work or a complete rethinking of a financial institution's technology stack. He explained that integrating Mambu's Intelligent Core with Mastercard Move gives customers a simpler way to introduce these capabilities and accelerate time to market. Zandona noted that the composable foundation allows the Intelligent Core to keep extending what financial institutions already trust rather than replacing it.
Pratik Khowala, Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard, observed that moving money across borders remains complex and fragmented despite advances in digital payments. People and businesses expect greater speed, transparency, and certainty from their international money movement. Mastercard Move combines global reach with trusted money movement capabilities to help financial institutions meet those expectations.
Global Reach and Market Need
Mastercard Move enables money to move within and across more than 200 countries and territories and in more than 150 currencies. The network reaches more than 17 billion endpoints and 95% of the world's banked population. This scale supports financial institutions as they serve retail customers and businesses that increasingly require dependable cross-border payment journeys.
The integration is designed to support both retail and business customers, including small and medium-sized enterprises that rely on international payments for trade and operations. By embedding cross-border services into digital banking journeys, institutions can offer greater visibility, speed, and certainty. This responds to a clear market shift toward frictionless global money movement.
Mambu and Mastercard are aligning their strengths to address a persistent gap in cross-border payments. The collaboration offers financial institutions a practical route to modernize their payment offerings without replacing the infrastructure they already use. As demand for transparent and frictionless international payments continues to rise, the combined solution positions banks to meet customer expectations more quickly and efficiently.