Mastercard Transforms its AP Process worldwide through its partnership with Boost Payment Solutions

CASE STUDY

Mastercard Transforms its AP Process worldwide through its partnership with Boost Payment Solutions

In a first of its kind alliance, Boost Payment Solutions (“Boost”) streamlined how Mastercard pays its suppliers worldwide with a one-stop-shop solution for optimized commercial card use and acceptance.

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND

Corporations and their banks are looking to financial technology companies to improve B2B payments by curing the pain points associated with traditional payment methods. While check, wire and ACH remain the dominant payment methods in B2B, the landscape is shifting as a greater number of buyers and suppliers are turning to commercial cards. Many of today’s trading partners see cards as better-suited to complement complex trading terms. Virtual cards are quickly becoming the preferred method of commercial card issuance and acceptance. The rapidly accelerated need for digital solutions has driven significant increases in adoptions over the last two years and is expected to grow by more than 300% by 2026.

AT A GLANCE

$4.8
TRILLION

It’s anticipated that the global value of B2B virtual card transactions will reach $4.8 trillion in 2026.

84%

of Chief Financial Officers say that payment digitization has improved their working capital.

76%

of financial institutions are currently working on or plan to work on virtual card solutions for their corporate customers.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

THE CHALLENGE

Mastercard wanted to migrate its payments to suppliers from check and ACH to a Mastercard commercial card product. Prior to engaging Boost in 2015, Mastercard had been paying most of its suppliers via checks, ACH and wires. Managing and processing payments to its vast network of suppliers, which includes facilities management, media, IT, legal, telecommunications, event partnerships and many other categories, involved onerous manual activities. To streamline its supplier payment process and reap the various benefits associated with Mastercard commercial card products, Mastercard needed to partner with a company that had the technical platform and supplier enablement capabilities with a global footprint.

PROOF POINTS

THE SOLUTION

Mastercard enlisted Boost to simplify its payments to suppliers via Boost’s proprietary straight-through processing (STP) platform, Boost Intercept^®, thereby allowing Mastercard to automate supplier onboarding, payment processing and remittance reporting.

Boost Intercept digitizes Mastercard’s commercial card payments so that payments are automatically settled with the supplier’s depository banks while payment notifications and detailed remittance reports are sent to suppliers in their preferred file format. By integrating Boost Intercept with Mastercard’s virtual card platform, In Control^®, Boost was able to convert the e-mail-based output from In Control into STP payments across the globe using locally issued card products with a single push of a button.

“As the leading global commercial card network, it was imperative that we migrate our own payments to suppliers over to a Mastercard product and Boost’s technology and supplier enablement capabilities, coupled with our own, allowed that to happen seamlessly. With Boost, we were able to offer our global suppliers a friction-free commercial card acceptance experience.”

Josh McNally
Vice President Payment Technology and Solutions Mastercard

BENEFITS OF STP WITH BOOST INTERCEPT

To make paying suppliers easier and to reap the benefits of using its commercial card platform, Mastercard needed to migrate its supplier network onto cards. To do so, Mastercard’s procurement team, led by Mr. Josh McNally, introduced its suppliers to Boost Intercept, which made card acceptance and remittance reporting a completely passive and simple experience for both parties.

By using commercial cards, Mastercard receives cash-back rebates and significantly expands its working capital. Mastercard is also able to leverage Boost’s international capabilities by expediting international and cross border payments as easily as domestic ones.

BENEFITS ACROSS THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Completely digital process
Eliminate manual data entry errors
Incremental revenue via Buyer rebates
Easy cross border and international settlement
Guarantee timely and accurate payments

Increase working capital
Optimize cost of acceptance
Actionable insights with enhanced reporting
Increased protection against attempted fraud
PCI data is never exposed to the supplier

PROJECT ACHIEVEMENTS

SIMPLIFIED ENROLLMENT

Boost has streamlined the enrollment process by providing U.S. based suppliers with an online, self-enrollment form allowing Mastercard to start processing payments within as early as 24 hours following enrollment. International suppliers are typically boarded within a week of enrollment. By working with Boost to broaden supplier acceptance globally, Mastercard’s procurement team has been able to optimize its commercial card program, which has resulted in reduced back-office costs by minimizing the types of payments its accounts receivable department is required to field.

RECURRING REBATES

Unlike other forms of payment, commercial cards often provide buyers with recurring rebates based on their relationship with their card issuer and the amount of spend they successfully migrate to their card program. By utilizing Boost, Mastercard is able to generate new streams of revenue through its commercial card issuer, Citibank.

WORKING CAPITAL

In addition to new revenue streams via rebates, Mastercard also benefits from another unique feature of commercial cards – expanded working capital through the grace period provided by its issuing bank. Unlike wire, ACH or check payments, where funds are immediately debited from Mastercard’s designated bank account, its commercial credit card product allows the company to extend its days payable outstanding (DPO) by paying back its card-issuing bank on mutually agreeable terms, thereby providing Mastercard with more control over its cashflow.

INTERNATIONAL FOOTPRINT

As a truly global organization, Mastercard required a commercial card program that would mirror its international footprint, and Boost’s international acquiring capabilities fulfilled that requirement. Through its global network of integrated acquirers and processors, Boost seamlessly facilitates Mastercard’s card payments to suppliers anywhere they do business, thereby eliminating the need for the company to connect directly to many acquirers and navigate local regulations. Boost currently processes payments on behalf of Mastercard and its worldwide affiliates in over 30 countries across the U.S., Canada, pan-Europe, UAE, Brazil, Australia, and the Caribbean.

ABOUT MASTERCARD

Mastercard (NYSE: MA), is a technology company in the global payments industry. Our global payments processing network connects consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. Mastercard products and solutions make everyday commerce activities – such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances – easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone.

For more information from Mastercard about this case study please contact

Raghu Adiraj
Vice President,
Commercial Acceptance

Raghu.Adiraju@mastercard.com

ABOUT BOOST

Boost Payment Solutions is the global leader in B2B payments with a technology platform that seamlessly serves the needs of today’s commercial trading partners. Our proprietary technology solutions bridge the needs of buyers and suppliers around the world, eliminating friction and delivering process efficiency, payment security, data insights and revenue optimization. Boost was founded in 2009 and operates in 45+ countries.

For more information from Boost about this case study please contact

John Weinrich
Head of U.S. Sales
JWeinrich@boostb2b.com

Download This Case Study

Cookie	Duration	Description
__cfruid	session	Cloudflare sets this cookie to identify trusted web traffic.
ASP.NET_SessionId	session	Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit.
CookieLawInfoConsent	1 year	CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default button state of the corresponding category and the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
OptanonConsent	1 year	OneTrust sets this cookie to store details about the site's cookie category and check whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent from the use of each category.
viewed_cookie_policy	1 year	The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin sets the cookie to store whether or not the user has consented to use cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
m	1 year 1 month 4 days	No description available.
visitor_id492571	1 year 1 month 4 days	Description is currently not available.
visitor_id492571-hash	1 year 1 month 4 days	Description is currently not available.

Cookie	Duration	Description
bcookie	1 year	LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser IDs.
bscookie	1 year	LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website.
li_sugr	3 months	LinkedIn sets this cookie to collect user behaviour data to optimise the website and make advertisements on the website more relevant.
lidc	1 day	LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection.
UserMatchHistory	1 month	LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	YouTube sets this cookie to measure bandwidth, determining whether the user gets the new or old player interface.
YSC	session	Youtube sets this cookie to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages.
yt-remote-connected-devices	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos.
yt-remote-device-id	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors.
_ga_*	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views.
ai_session	30 minutes	This is a unique anonymous session identifier cookie set by Microsoft Application Insights software to gather statistical usage and telemetry data for apps built on the Azure cloud platform.
ai_user	1 year	Microsoft Azure sets this cookie as a unique user identifier cookie, enabling counting of the number of users accessing the application over time.
AnalyticsSyncHistory	1 month	Linkedin set this cookie to store information about the time a sync took place with the lms_analytics cookie.
CONSENT	2 years	YouTube sets this cookie via embedded YouTube videos and registers anonymous statistical data.
ln_or	1 day	Linkedin sets this cookie to registers statistical data on users' behaviour on the website for internal analytics.
pardot	past	The pardot cookie is set while the visitor is logged in as a Pardot user. The cookie indicates an active session and is not used for tracking.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__cf_bm	30 minutes	Cloudflare set the cookie to support Cloudflare Bot Management.
elementor	never	The website's WordPress theme uses this cookie. It allows the website owner to implement or change the website's content in real-time.
li_gc	5 months 27 days	Linkedin set this cookie for storing visitor's consent regarding using cookies for non-essential purposes.

CASE STUDY