Mastercard Teams With Galileo For Instant Debit Card Issuing

Mastercard and Galileo have announced Thursday (Nov. 21) a collaboration to help FinTechs and other financial-affiliated businesses with fast issuing of debit cards and bank accounts for customers, without expensive startup fees or long-term contracts.

The initiative is called Galileo Instant Issuing, and developers can use the company’s open application programming interfaces (APIs) to create digital payment solutions that suit their businesses.

“Innovators have understood the opportunity of using debit cards in new ways, but when they started looking to put their concepts into action, they discovered the high-friction, high-cost and time-consuming nature of the process,” said Clay Wilkes, Galileo CEO. “We developed Galileo Instant Issuing to put the power in innovators’ hands by dramatically decreasing the time needed to bring their digital payments solutions to life.”

FinTechs, for example, can leverage the new initiative to create debit cards and bank accounts more easily. For Neobanks, the service can be used not only for the issuing of cards, but to be able to demonstrate banking prowess to potential investors. Gig employers can use the service to issue cards for payment of employees, and 1099 employers can pay employees faster with actual cards.

For merchants, the service improves purchasing and it can also be used as a way to reimburse employees for business expenses.

“Galileo has created a powerful, time-saving innovation. By working with Galileo on Instant Issuing, Mastercard is providing yet another way for FinTechs and other emerging companies to develop and launch innovative payment solutions quickly and easily,” said Jess Turner, executive vice president, Product and Innovation, North America, Mastercard. “This program will now be added to Mastercard Accelerate, and be one of the ways in which Mastercard will help new companies in the United States grow and scale.”

Galileo has created the Galileo Dashboard, which is a portal that will allow providers with access to a testing environment and a slew of APIs meant to aid in the process. Businesses can get to the dashboard through the Galileo website.