With this step, Mastercard will offer a new core advantage to Mastercard customers, small business debit issuers, and consumer prepaid issuers in the US: a foundational set of open banking products. By reducing account abandonment, minimizing manual entering of payment credentials, and reducing non-sufficient fund (NSF) returns, Mastercard's new program aims to enhance the digital account opening experience.

According to a recent Insider Intelligence report, Gen Z's use of mobile banking is increasing at a rate of 12.4% annually, which has led to projections that it will increase from 20.7 million in 2020 to 47.8 million by 2026.
 

Mastercard wants to provide participating US issuers who choose to participate in the program free access to the company's "Account Owner Verification," "Account Detail Verification," and "Account Balance Check" solutions when used to support the opening of a digital account for a general-purpose reloadable consumer prepaid product and a consumer debit card bearing the Mastercard brand, in recognition of the demands of an increasingly digital world.

"An additional gateway to the digital economy"
 

In order to facilitate a simple and safe digital account opening process, Mastercard Open Banking makes use of industry standards and machine learning to safely share consumer-permission data. Mastercard issuers can decrease account abandonment and inactivity by quickly funding accounts, increase the accuracy of account ownership verification, and lessen expensive NSF refunds by using real-time balance checks with "Open Banking for Account Opening."
 

"Today's digital consumer is increasingly opening bank accounts online, gravitating towards the convenience and efficiency of the experience versus more traditional manual methods," said Silvana Hernandez, executive vice president, product and engineering, Mastercard, North America. By using the power of consumer-permission data, the open banking for Account Opening initiative offers a secure and beneficial way to access the digital economy.
 

By utilizing solutions that cover the whole company, Mastercard open banking enables partners and clients to provide a more contemporary and secure digital account opening experience. Additionally, Mastercard wants to improve the ecosystem for all players by using open banking to make pertinent use cases safer, easier, and more accessible.