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Mastercard is making an assertive move into the Open Finance future of underwriting with the launch of Mastercard Credit Intelligence, a suite of data-rich tools designed to accelerate and refine credit decisioning for banks and fintech lenders.
Mastercard bets on Open Finance
The initiative reflects a growing trend in the payments industry: the repackaging of transaction-level network data into analytical products that support more dynamic, inclusive lending models.
At its core, the suite blends Mastercard’s network signals with permissioned consumer or merchant financial data to offer what the company describes as a “more transparent and expanded” basis for assessing creditworthiness.
By incorporating elements such as transaction types, spend categories and identity markers, Mastercard aims to supplement traditional credit bureau files — particularly for thin-file customers and small businesses that often fall outside conventional scoring frameworks.
A Push to Shrink the Time-to-Decision
Speed is one of the headline promises. Lenders frequently face operational bottlenecks when analysing applications and customising underwriting rules, especially for borrowers with limited documented histories.
Mastercard Credit Intelligence is engineered to compress these timelines by giving lenders structured, API-driven access to additional behavioural insights.
Early activity in the US centres on small business credit, where Mastercard’s Open Finance tools can pull in permissioned cash-flow analytics and risk signals to improve underwriting precision.
The approach mirrors a broader evolution in SME lending: shifting away from static financial statements toward real-time operational data, enabling lenders to underwrite based on business performance rather than credit bureau proxies alone.
Bringing More Borrowers into the Digital Economy
Mastercard positions the suite as an inclusivity engine — an argument echoed by Kaushik Gopal, the company’s executive vice-president for business and market insights.
He argues that a “healthy digital economy” requires solutions that open the door to consumers and merchants historically overlooked by traditional credit systems.
By layering network data with bureau and telco information, lenders can form a more holistic understanding of an applicant’s financial behaviour.
Practical examples illustrate the point.
A 25-year-old with a limited credit file can permit their bank to access Mastercard network insights, giving the lender visibility of legitimate transaction patterns and identity consistency.
For a growing merchant, the same tools can surface historical transaction flows that seldom appear in conventional credit evaluations.
Global Ambitions and a Broader Data Strategy
The suite is already live across several regions — including the Philippines, UAE, Australia, Brazil and the US — and Mastercard is securing partnerships that embed these tools deeper into local credit markets.
In Brazil, the company is working with acquirer Stone to enhance merchant credit offerings; in the US, Credit Intelligence integrates directly via Mastercard Developers, positioning it firmly within the firm’s expanding suite of API-based products.
This launch also fits neatly into Mastercard’s wider Open Finance strategy to leverage its data trove across the payments value chain, from optimisation platforms that lift merchant approval rates to initiatives such as One Credential and Open Banking payment rails.
Credit Intelligence may be the clearest signal yet of how the network intends to turn data exhaust into tangible value — not only for lenders, but for the next generation of consumers and businesses seeking access to finance.
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