The new core benefit program from Mastercard is aimed at select U.S. debit and prepaid products, designed to streamline and secure account opening with open banking capabilities.

Mastercard’s Open Banking for Account Opening program will provide a set of open banking products as a core benefit to Mastercard consumer and small business debit issuers as well as consumer prepaid issuers in the U.S. It will be generally available in the first half of 2024.

Mastercard will provide participating U.S. issuers with free access to Mastercard’s Account Owner Verification, Account Detail Verification and Account Balance Check solutions to support digital account opening of a Mastercard branded products.

The included solutions can verify account ownership, lower account abandonment, reduce non-sufficient fund (NSF) returns, and minimize manual entry of payment credentials. All this functionality is enabled by safe exchange of consumer-permissioned data, leveraging industry standards of open banking and machine learning.?

Among the main benefits of the Open Banking for Account Opening program, Mastercard quotes lower abandonment and inactive accounts, rapid account funding, more seamless user experience, and reduction of costly NSF returns with real-time balance checks.?

“Today’s digital consumer is increasingly opening bank accounts online, gravitating towards the convenience and efficiency of the experience versus more traditional manual methods. The Open Banking for Account Opening program provides another entry point to the digital economy through valuable and secure experiences that lean into the power of consumer-permissioned data.”

Silvana Hernandez, Executive Vice President, Product and Engineering, North America, Mastercard

Last year, Mastercard improved the Open Banking platform delivered by its subsidiary with advanced analytics in order to facilitate diverse and inclusive credit models for small business loans.