Mastercard and Thought Machine, a cloud-native banking technology company, are advancing their partnership to deliver high-quality payments and core banking (critical back-end technology for product and account management and the customer ledger) capabilities to financial institutions looking to modernise their technology stack.

Mastercard’s global network and innovative digital solutions, paired with Thought Machine’s next-generation core banking and payments platform, can enable financial institutions to accelerate the transition from legacy core banking and payment technologies to cloud-native ones and provide their customers with efficient, seamless banking experiences.

The collaboration aims to enhance banking efficiency, lower costs, and enable the rapid introduction of more integrated, personalised, and customer-centric experiences–from account opening to credit scoring. It also enables banks to offer more innovative pay-now solutions, especially with the digitisation of debit cards typically linked to current accounts. 

“As we expand our partnership with Mastercard, we plan to leverage their global presence and payment expertise to deliver our core banking and payment platforms to banks worldwide,” says Paul Taylor, CEO and founder, Thought Machine. “We are excited to simplify and enhance the modernisation experience for complex banks worldwide and make it even easier for them to deliver sophisticated customer experiences.”

“We’ve had a longstanding relationship with Thought Machine, and they’re now our first strategic, end-to-end partner in the core banking space,” says Mark Barnett, President, Mastercard Europe. “We’re providing leading banks and financial institutions with a comprehensive core banking and card issuing solution that meets tomorrow’s payment needs, and we look forward to scaling our joint capabilities.”

Beyond core banking, Mastercard and Thought Machine partnered on an issuer processing solution, Vault Payments, in 2022. Mastercard's cloud technology powers and enhances the Vault Payments offering across card and non-card use cases. Thought Machine also participated in the Mastercard Start Path startup engagement program in 2020.