Dubai tech unicorn Zeta and Mastercard announce partnership

Dubai-based banking tech unicorn Zeta and Mastercard have signed a five-year global partnership.

As part of the agreement, the firms will go-to-market jointly to launch credit cards with issuers worldwide on Zeta’s modern, cloud-native and API-ready credit processing stack. Mastercard has also invested in Zeta to bolster the partnership.

Sandeep Malhotra, executive vice president, Products & Innovation, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, said: “As people shop and bank online more than ever before, Mastercard is partnering with Zeta to provide issuing banks and fintech innovators with modern credit card processing capabilities at scale that will maximise the safety, security and convenience of e-commerce, online banking and contactless transactions. By deploying Zeta’s credit processing stack, issuers will have an opportunity to grow their user base, drive higher usage and enter new geographical markets, all while accelerating the cashless revolution around the world.”

“With Zeta’s next-gen credit card processing platform, we are fundamentally rewiring how issuers launch credit card programmes by offering new paradigms over legacy mainframe systems,” said Bhavin Turakhia, co-founder and CEO of Zeta. “Amongst other benefits, our stack allows issuers to increase the lending book by composing contextual upsells using our extensive APIs and SDKs, reduce costs via pay-as-you-go SaaS (software-as-a-service) billing, improve customer satisfaction by launching rich, self-serve experiences for card holders, and launch and iterate faster using our infinitely scalable cloud-native deployment.”

We are excited to share that Zeta and @Mastercard have partnered to power next-gen credit processing for banks and fintechs. Mastercard has underscored the partnership by making a financial investment in Zeta. https://t.co/0d07npFmwQ#NextGenCreditProcessing pic.twitter.com/CXAzOYt6LX

— Zeta Suite (@zetasuite) March 7, 2022

With Mastercard’s support and the integration of its capabilities in digital issuance, fraud and risk, loyalty solutions and more, Zeta aims to take the credit card processing industry from the age of fragmented, multi-vendor systems to an age of nimble, composable, single vendor systems that are  responsive to changing cardholder needs and preferences.

With both partners pre-configuring key capabilities behind the scenes, issuers will be able to launch cards faster, as it gets easier to design and launch flexible, highly customisable card programmes.

The two companies started their collaboration in 2018 in Asia Pacific when Zeta joined Start Path, Mastercard’s global startup engagement programme. Zeta also recently joined the Mastercard Developers Partner Network, Engage. Through Engage, Zeta will gain access to the Mastercard network to pre-integrate or bundle products and services, including programmes that provide customer KYC and verification, instant digital card issuance, provisioning and usage.