Mastercard (NYSE: MA) announced earlier this week it has collaborated with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to launch Mastercard Track, which is described as a unique global trade platform that will simplify and enhance how companies around the world do business with each other.
According to Mastercard, the new Mastercard Track platform will address these fundamental challenges by further streamlining and automating the procure-to-pay-process – enabling businesses to manage business identity, compliance, and payments in a more efficient way. Mastercard also revealed that Mastercard Track underscores its commitment to address several pain points in the global business environment. The platform now draws on and complements the whole range of Mastercard innovation and B2B assets, from account-to-account and card payment solutions to fraud management, data analytics and payment gateway services.
“From reducing the steps it takes to identify a business partner, to making the payments process simpler and more transparent, Mastercard Track has the potential to unlock economic growth and to level the playing field for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME).”
Speaking about Mastercard Track, Michael Froman, vice chairman and president of strategic growth at Mastercard, stated:
“This adds hundreds of billions of dollars of costs and burdensome delays to global trade. Mastercard Track is a tool that will help reduce frictions in the global trading system and promote increased exports – especially by small and medium-sized businesses.”
Peggy Johnson, executive vice president, Microsoft then added:
“By building Mastercard Track on Azure, Mastercard will be able to take advantage of our stringent security and compliance standards, our global footprint and our intelligent cloud solutions to help organizations of all sizes drive value from the back-office to the front of the enterprise.”