Mastercard, AptPay Ink Deal To Enable Faster Cash Access For Businesses

Mastercard and AptPay announced on Wednesday (Aug. 19) a deal that the companies said will allow “faster access to cash” for businesses of various sizes and across a range of sectors.

Under the arrangement, the Mastercard Send push payments platform will integrate with the AptPay platform.

Mastercard Send is “a global push payments platform that enables funds to be sent securely and in near real-time into any payment card or account,” the joint news release states. AptPay is a Canadian FinTech company that was formed in 2019.

The two firms state in the news release that “companies using the AptPay platform will be able to send digital payments seamlessly and securely in near real-time through bank accounts, prepaid cards or digital wallets.”

The companies assert that the benefits include more safety than checks provide, lowered expenses, increased transparency and the ability to reverse payments.

“COVID-19 has amplified the need for businesses to digitize and automate their payment processes, to free cash flow and eliminate the friction caused by handling checks,” Sue Hutchison, senior vice president of product, digital and new payments at Mastercard in Canada, said in a prepared statement. “With Mastercard Send, businesses and consumers can expect to receive funds directly, securely and in near real-time.”

AptPay CEO Suganthan Vishnu Krisnarajah added: “Over the last few years, digital transformation and faster payments have been top priorities for many industries. COVID-19 has created the perfect storm, highlighting the problems caused by not having these priorities in place. AptPay’s Digital Payment Hub enables companies to execute on these priorities and weather the storm.”

He continued: “Using our APIs, companies can easily implement Mastercard Send to process payouts where the end-to-end process is much faster than legacy payment types. Customers can also rely on AptPay’s compliance services to ensure transactions are safe and secure, and [that they] meet the compliance needs for their industry.”

In an April 2020 interview with PYMNTS, Mastercard Senior Vice President of Business Development for North America Kathryn Cleary said that electronic payment transfers are increasingly accepted in sectors that have eschewed them – even the government – because they offer efficiency, transparency and security.