Mastercard, PayPal Get Together To Take Partnership on the Road

PayPal and Mastercard have been working together for some time, and given the number of people who likely use Mastercard in connection with PayPal on some front or another, this makes sense. What makes even more sense is an expansion of that program to cover more countries, which the duo recently did by stepping up its partnership into several potentially lucrative regions.

The expanded PayPal / Mastercard partnership now includes Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, which encompasses a whole lot of ground and some major markets in the process. By doing so, the duo notes, not only will customers have more choice when going abroad, but also a better overall customer experience as well as a way to make Mastercard more prominent within PayPal’s global operations.

The deal calls for Mastercard to be more clearly presented as a payment option on par with every other within PayPal Wallet’s user interface, a move which will make Mastercard more readily seen as a payment option overall. Users, meanwhile, will be able to set up Mastercard as a default payment system, which makes for more rapid checkout processes. Those with PayPal balances, meanwhile, will be able to transfer those more readily to a Mastercard debit card for added effectiveness.

Mastercard’s president of international markets Ann Cairns noted “People everywhere know and trust the familiar Mastercard brand, whether they’re paying in the physical or digital world. Our expanded partnership with PayPal affirms our commitment to our billions of cardholders across the globe to deliver the simple, speedy and secure payment experience they’ve come to expect from Mastercard, across devices and channels.”

Improving customer experience is generally a good idea. A better customer experience has been shown to bring users back for more business later, and businesses that can’t use repeat business are few and far between. By improving the customer experience, PayPal and Mastercard have improved the chances they’ll be the setup picked when it comes time to start the checkout process, every time the checkout process starts.

In an environment where there’s no shortage of other options, anything a company can do to distinguish itself from competitors is well worth doing.