Dubai: Mastercard has entered into a strategic partnership with the real-time payment solutions company, ProgressSoft, to ease the integration of Mastercard Cross-Border Services and accelerate cross-border remittances across the Middle East and North Africa.
With Mastercard Cross-Border Services, financial service providers can seamlessly process digital payments leveraging its global network through a single connection. Furthermore, these cross-border payments can reach almost anywhere in the world with certainty and predictability, and without back-end charges. Mastercard’s platform plays a key role in improving world-wide connectivity, by providing new and enhanced innovation across the global digital ecosystem.
Through this partnership, Mastercard and ProgressSoft will help reduce the integration time by at least half. The expedition of bank onboarding will also allow Mastercard to accelerate the rollout of its Cross-Border Services network across the MENA region, allowing financial institutions to meet rising consumer demand for faster remittances.
Describing the impact of Mastercard’s partnership with ProgressSoft, Pankaj Asthaana, Vice President – Digital Payments & Labs (MENA) at Mastercard said: “Following the successful implementation of our technology across leading regional banks, we now look forward to working with ProgressSoft to transform how banks across the region process cross-border payments. This partnership makes it easier and faster for banks to onboard and integrate Mastercard Cross-Border Services – a platform that also relieves banks from the remittance certification process.”
ProgressSoft, which is based in Jordan, serves more than 650,000 users in 24 countries with services including blockchain-based central bank digital currencies and automated clearing houses.
ProgressSoft’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Wakileh said “We recognize the intrinsic benefits of faster cross-border remittances to people, communities and institutions around the world. Partnering with Mastercard delivers a crucial component that achieves those benefits, and our Payments Hub is at the core of this evolution.”
Mastercard’s Cross-Border Services enable banks, fintechs, mobile network operators and exchange houses to modernize remittances, offering unbeatable speed and security. Bolstered by the acquisition of Transfast in 2019, Mastercard enables its partners to better respond to the challenges in a post-pandemic world by providing safe, convenient ways to Cross-Border Services and receive money nearly anywhere in the world.
