FutureBank selected for Mastercard Start Path program

Source: TechCentral

Open banking and payments technology specialist FutureBank has been selected to participate in Mastercard Start Path’s New Networks program. The company, which provides financial institutions with a platform that simplifies the integration between core banking and modern fintech, is one of eight companies joining the new Mastercard cohort announced on 6 February.

“This new opportunity will allow us to accelerate innovation, scale our solutions more effectively and help us play a role in shaping the future of digital banking and financial services alongside Mastercard,” said Sergio Barbosa, CEO of FutureBank.

Mastercard Start Path’s New Networks program offers participating companies with resources, mentorship and access to Mastercard’s vast ecosystem to help support growth and innovation in the competitive fintech landscape.

Since it was founded in 2014, Start Path’s portfolio has grown to more than 450 start-ups from over 60 countries.

“As the fintech landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, Mastercard is embracing opportunities to support and collaborate with start-ups to build the future of innovation through the Start Path New Networks program,” said Sabrina Tharani, senior vice president of global fintech programs at Mastercard.

“Mastercard has selected FutureBank to join its ecosystem of innovators and will provide opportunities to access its network of partners, mentorship opportunities and resources to support their scaling journey.”

Democratising financial services

Mastercard carefully selected each start-up during a competitive application and vetting process for their innovative solutions that utilise open banking and open principles, as well as their strategic alignment with democratising financial services.

The New Networks program within Mastercard Start Path is designed to support fintechs to scale and power experiences that enable consumer choice.

Symbiotic relationship

“We know that banks struggle to adopt new innovative product offerings without causing significant disruption to both the banking operations and the customer experience. We can solve these challenges for them,” explained Barbosa.

Legacy banks running core systems are facing growing challenges as the more agile neobanks snap at their heels.

Research from McKinsey found that operating costs for banks still running outdated cores averaged 10x higher than those with next-generation core systems. What’s more, the IDC warns that the cost of delaying migration is also growing, saying banks that fail to migrate to a future-ready platform can potentially miss out on a 42% increase in additional payments revenue and savings on legacy costs of up to 21% annually.

“FutureBank has always viewed the banking and payments technology landscape as unnecessarily complex. Banks and fintechs are often tied to core banking systems, keeping them from new product innovations and digital transformation,” said Barbosa.

“We believe banking and payments should be 100% plug-and-play. Collaborative partnerships, like those nurtured through the Mastercard ecosystem, takes us a step closer to a future where this is possible.”

FutureBank CEO Sergio Barbosa and Global Kinetic COO Lorén Rose

FutureBank brings rapid integration and modernisation to Mastercard Engage’s global customers

FutureBank, a leader in open banking and payments technology, has been accepted into the Mastercard Engage network as a Digital First partner. The move will allow Mastercard customers to fastrack their modernisation efforts through the FutureBank platform’s unique integration technology that allows banks and fintechs to quickly connect to the best banking capabilities on the market.

Engage, Mastercard’s global partner network, offers its customers access to a qualified network of technology and fintech partners so they can rapidly build, deploy and grow Mastercard payment solutions in an easy and cost effective way. In 2022, more than 150 Engage partners helped their customers deploy innovative solutions on more than 500 million accounts using Mastercard products and services.

Together with Mastercard, FutureBank will work on the problem of instant issuance and instant credit scoring in emerging markets. This will help ensure qualified customers can quickly access credit, boosting financial inclusion. In addition to this there will be a strong focus on helping legacy banks globally modernise their platforms to enable the instant issuance of cards.

“FutureBank has a proven track record of helping banks and fintechs accelerate time to market by making it easier to embed vital new financial services and make them available to their customers and partners. Far too many banks are still operating on core banking systems that are encumbered with technical debt and struggling with the challenge of integrating older infrastructure with innovative cloud based fintech offerings. Our integration layer provides a bridge to connect core banking and modern fintech to easily launch innovative new financial products and Mastercard saw the benefits this could deliver to banks, irrespective of their size, location, or technology footprint,” explains Sergio Barbosa, CEO of FutureBank.

Participating banks will also benefit from FutureBank’s sandbox environment, which provides mock data and code snippets to code against its platform in real time, no matter the language. An online account test simulator and SDK allows developers to test real world scenarios and craft tailormade embedded finance solutions that answer their customers’ unique requirements. FutureBank’s own extensive partner network also provides its customers with sought after capabilities around KYC, crypto, security and more.

“The Mastercard Digital First Program aims to assist banks in their critical journey to modernise and digitise their offerings. A surprising number of banks still struggle with this due to factors like internal capability constraints and budget availability. FutureBank’s platform already has many of the major core banking adapters in place, enabling the rapid and cost-effective integration of Mastercard products as well as other fintech options,” explains Pieter de Wet, Global Business Development and Partnerships Lead of FutureBank (also referred to as ‘The Sales Guy’).

Giving context to how efficient the integration process can be, Barbosa shared that FutureBank reduces integration costs by up to 85%, supports up to 80% of customer-facing

functionality off-the-shelf, and natively integrates with the majority of core banking infrastructure today, making it the most compatible banking platform in the market.

Becoming an Engage network partner will also deliver meaningful benefits to FutureBank.

“The partnership affords FutureBank a unique opportunity to extend our global footprint. The successes of the network are well known and we are excited about the prospect of working more closely with many of these respected partners. Collaboration has been at the heart of FutureBank’s culture since our inception and this partnership will allow us to work side by side with other industry innovators, which can only benefit our company and our existing customers,” Barbosa says.