Mastercard Open Banking Protect is designed to improve the ability to combat fraud in open banking and increase the confidence of financial institutions when approving third-party requests
Three fintechs have joined the Mastercard Open Banking Protect.
Aion, DiPocket and Modulr have all signed agreements to use the Protect solution, which is a key component of Mastercard’s open banking solutions portfolio of applications and services to underpin, enable and safeguard the open banking ecosystem across Europe.
Mastercard Open Banking Protect is designed to improve the ability to combat fraud in open banking and increase the confidence of financial institutions when approving third-party requests
It offers swift verification of third-party provider certification and registration status against all relevant directories, and uses network-level data on a given provider to spot trends and changes to regular activities through behaviour monitoring in order to stop potentially fraudulent requests.
The new Mastercard Open Banking Protect partners cover a wide range of use cases, including a digital bank powered by AI (Aion), a wearable pre-paid tech provider (DiPocket), and a payments-as-a-service alternative to wholesale and commercial transaction banking for businesses (Modulr).
All of these companies are collaborating with Mastercard through Open Banking Protect to enhance their ability to identify fraud in a new ecosystem and better protect their business and their customers against unauthorised third-party providers.
Jim Wadsworth, senior vice president of open banking at Mastercard, said: “While there is strong momentum in the open banking ecosystem, financial institutions, third-party providers and users continue to be concerned about the potential for fraud and security breaches.”
“Mastercard Open Banking Solutions draws upon our considerable expertise in operating and supporting global banking and payments systems to help ensure the open banking ecosystem works seamlessly with security at its core. We designed Protect to offer enhanced safety and security features for financial institutions and third-party providers using open banking, including third-party provider verification and market-leading fraud monitoring.”
“Collaboration is key to building a resilient open banking market, and we are delighted that Aion, DiPocket, and Modulr are the latest in a series of partnerships for Mastercard as we work to create an even safer system for all participants. This is a significant milestone for the wider ecosystem and opens the door to even greater adoption of open banking across Europe.”
Cyrus Wadia, payments strategy director at Modulr, commented: “In our bid to eliminate the hidden inefficiencies that have traditionally proved costly to UK businesses, we are pleased to work with Mastercard to supercharge our efficient, secure and accessible payment service, so our customers can make the most of open banking.”
Fedele Di Maggio, chief executive officer of DiPocket, said: “Investing in fraud prevention now is incredibly important to ensure that we are safeguarding the open banking ecosystem for the benefit of our customers. Through Open Banking Protect, we are doing just that by providing a service that is not only low cost and transparent, but also secure and protected.”
Mastercard recently entered into an agreement to acquire Finicity, a provider of real-time access to financial data and insights, for $825 million to strengthen its open banking platform and open up North America as a new market.
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