Mastercard’s Next Move In Cross-Border Payments

Historically, the cross-border payments landscape has been highly fragmented, with many transfers needing to pass through multiple intermediary banks before they reach the intended recipient. This backdrop saw Swift become a crucial part of much of the world’s cross-border payments by providing the messaging systems required to enable transfers involving a number of correspondent banks.

However, a number of new commercial players are now introducing new techniques and models to send money across borders more cheaply, quickly and transparently. Companies including Thunes, Nium and Visa Direct have already made strides towards providing the infrastructure required to introduce new standards to cross-border payments.

Mastercard Move, the company’s portfolio of money transfer capabilities, has firmly established itself as one of the emerging key players enabling banks, fintechs and businesses to send money via a wide range of different rails and networks without requiring individual connections to each one.

Although the brand is only a few years old, Mastercard Move now connects to over 200 countries, more than 150 currencies and around 17 billion endpoints worldwide, including cards, accounts, digital wallets, cash and stablecoin wallets. Pratik Khowala, Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard, has led Mastercard Move since January 2025 after spending 25 years at the company as CFO.

Since then, the platform has grown significantly and achieved a number of milestones. MORE FOR YOU “Mastercard Move is outpacing competitors, delivering strong transaction growth in the past year – significantly ahead of our nearest rival. This momentum reflects our deep understanding of customer needs and our ability to deliver against them.

We’ve expanded payment corridors, added new endpoints and embedded Move into platforms people use every day,” explains Khowala. Following a successful 2025, Khowala is turning his attention to further improving and expanding Mastercard Move’s capabilities and reach and targeting new customer segments.

Shifting Mastercard Move’s strategic focuses According to Khowala, strategic prioritization has been key to Mastercard’s recent successes. Based on his learnings from his time as CFO, he is ensuring that the company places a strong focus on specific areas of the business where it can gain competitive advantage.

By doing so, he has been able to increase attention on certain parts of the business, enabling Mastercard to surpass similar offerings from its competitors. Part of this involves Mastercard Move’s corridor-focus strategy, which tailors pricing, as well as fraud and settlement capabilities to specific routes.

Riyadh-based Saudi Awwal Bank (SAB), which partners with Mastercard, leveraging its global payment rails and cross-border infrastructure, is one the parties that have benefited from this. “In cross-border banking, not all corridors are equal. Each corridor has its own regulatory nuances, settlement dynamics and customer expectations.

A one-size-fits-all approach no longer meets the needs of increasingly sophisticated clients,” says Bandar Al-Gheshayan, Chief Wealth & Personal Banking Officer, Saudi Awwal Bank. “Mastercard Move’s corridor-focused strategy enables precision by combining advanced fraud intelligence, faster settlement capabilities and transparent pricing tailored to specific routes.” This enables SAB to enhance how it services different customer segments, including offering improved tracking, reconciliation and liquidity management to its business clients and giving its personal banking customers greater levels of predictability, competitive pricing and transparency.