Mastercard Acquires Transfast in Cross-Border Mobile Payments Push
For anyone who’s ever done business in Africa, South America, or even Europe before the whole European Union thing kicked in and made things a little easier, cross-border payments issues are one of the biggest problems any business faces. While getting money from one country or another probably should be a little difficult, sometimes it can really get in the way of business. Enter Mastercard, who recently tipped us off about its new purchase of Transfast, and in the process made it that much easier to move cash across borders.
The purchase of Transfast, Mastercard notes, is a way to help not only businesses, but also consumers and even governments get cash from one place to another by taking advantage of the trans-border network that Transfast built before Mastercard picked it up. With Transfast in place, Mastercard’s own ability to offer cross-border operations just got that much better.
Transfast’s CEO, Samish Kumar, noted “This is a pivotal day for Transfast as we embark on the natural next step in our journey. Mastercard’s global reach complements our own network across over 100 countries, and together we will grow within the account-to-account payments space, helping organizations improve operational efficiencies and supporting wider economic growth. Alongside Mastercard, we look forward to developing new innovations and products to support people and businesses to predict and plan when they pay people and get paid, enabling them to thrive.”
While we all expect a certain amount of ease of use when it comes to transactions—even those that go from one country to another—it’s worth noting that it has to be a little difficult too. If it weren’t, it’d be that much easier to commit crimes and hide the proceeds outside of the home country’s jurisdiction. Yet here, Mastercard shows us that it doesn’t have to be all that complex. Since Mastercard has a lot of experience in processing payments—it’s been doing it for decades—it almost certainly has the legal issues well in hand, which means that the addition of Transfast will be mostly a plus for convenience.
When safety and legality are well in hand, this opens up the chance to make things easier too. Mastercard has taken a step in that direction with the acquisition of Transfast.