Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Mar 18: Mastercard is set to roll out its latest offering ‘Mastercard Move’ in India, targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and student communities to enable faster, safer cross-border payments.

Speaking on the initiative, Pratik Khowala, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Transfer Solutions, said the company is focusing on simplifying international payments, particularly in the education and SME sectors. He added that the vision is to bring an experience similar to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to cross-border transactions.

Mastercard Move supports transfers across over 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 17 billion endpoints including bank accounts, cards, wallets and cash systems, while enabling transactions in over 150 currencies.

The platform offers multi-rail payment capabilities covering peer-to-peer (P2P), business-to-business (B2B), business-to-person (B2P), government transactions, and bill payments. Through partnerships with firms like Infosys, the system is being integrated into banking and fintech platforms using pre-integrated APIs.

The company is also enhancing services such as verification systems to improve security and interoperability in global transactions.

Highlighting current challenges, Khowala said cross-border payments largely depend on correspondent banking systems, which often involve multiple intermediaries, making transactions costly, slow and lacking transparency.

He noted that students studying abroad face delays in fee payments, sometimes risking admission issues, while SMEs struggle with foreign exchange costs and delayed receipts.

Mastercard aims to enable SMEs to invoice and receive payments in foreign currencies such as dollars and euros, helping them reduce conversion costs and improve cash flow efficiency.

“Our effort is to ensure businesses and individuals receive money in India as fast and as affordably as possible,” Khowala said, adding that the company is well-positioned globally to address cross-border payment challenges.