Mastercard Introduces End-User Request To Pay Framework In UK

Mastercard is launching an end-user application service within Pay.UK’s request to pay (R2P) framework to facilitate payments.

“Mastercard’s Request to Pay solution has the ability to transform bill payments in the U.K. As individuals and businesses all demand faster, easier and more intuitive ways to pay bills, the pressure is on financial institutions to quickly offer innovative solutions,”  Andrew Buckley, executive vice president of product management at Mastercard, said in a press release on Thursday (April 8).

He added that this extension to its R2P solution also offers companies a fast way to introduce their own custom tools “ensuring that they stand out in the sector” while also providing new revenue streams and ways to interact with their customers.

Mastercard’s R2P solution is an application and repository service provider, which now offers the ability to create and enroll end-user applications — for example, a consumer mobile app or a corporate IT system.

“These are necessary to create, send, view, and respond to Requests to Pay for billers and payers, while also building in message repositories — the secure message storing and routing component,” according to the press release.

Some 10 percent of people in the U.K. forget to pay their bills, and 17 percent don’t feel they can control what’s being paid from their accounts, according to Mastercard’s 2020 State of Pay report. With Mastercard’s R2P solution, people have more ways to make bill payments. 

“Request to Pay has the power to transform how people pay by putting user choice at the heart of the payment process, providing greater control and flexibility when it comes to paying bills,” said David Piper, head of service lines at Pay.UK.

This new service will give financial institutions, FinTechs and aggregators the ability to develop an end-user application at a lower cost than if they developed it themselves. It also easily works with existing processes and enables choice of connectivity.

In a PYMNTS interview last month, Bricklin Dwyer, Mastercard’s chief economist, said that locations that were already digitally savvy pre-pandemic — Asia Pacific, North America and Europe — saw a rapid escalation in eCommerce.