Mastercard introduced Mastercard Track in collaboration with Microsoft. Track is a global trade platform that will simplify and enhance how companies around the world do business with each other.
While parts of the B2B process have been digitized, large and costly gaps still remain and are only expected to rise. These costs are added to the inefficiency of nearly half of all global transactions that are still done in paper.
Mastercard Track will address these challenges by streamlining and automating the procure-to-pay-process, enabling businesses to manage their identity, compliance and payments in a more efficient way.
“While there have been great improvements and innovations in the way consumers pay, the global B2B space remains highly inefficient and paper-based”, says Michael Froman, vice chairman and president of strategic growth at Mastercard. “This adds hundreds of billions of dollars of costs and burdensome delays to global trade. Mastercard Track is a tool that will help reduce frictions in the global trading system and promote increased exports – especially by small and medium-sized businesses.”
Consumers have become accustomed to having a wide selection of technology solutions, and businesses are looking to optimize their speed, security and convenience in their everyday operations. Mastercard Track will be able to reduce the steps it takes to identify a business partner and make payment processes simpler and more transparent. The solution also has the potential to unlock economic growth and will level the playing field for small and medium sized enterprises.
“Together with Mastercard, we’re helping companies around the world accelerate the pace of their own transformation by creating a more efficient buying and selling process at scale,” says Peggy Johnson, executive vice president, Microsoft. “By building Mastercard Track on Azure, Mastercard will be able to take advantage of our stringent security and compliance standards, our global footprint and our intelligent cloud solutions to help organizations of all sizes drive value from the back-office to the front of the enterprise.”
Mastercard partnered with Basware, BirchStreet, Coupa, the Infor GT Nexus Commerce Network, Ivalua, Jaggaer, Liaison Technologies, Tradeshift and Tungsten Network to roll out Track's identity, compliance and payment management capabilities to buyers and suppliers. Starting in 2019, customers of the organizations will be able to maintain, retrieve and exchange key information relating to themselves and their trading partners through the Track Trade Directory, a secured repository of over 150 million company registrations worldwide.
As the platform expands, suppliers will have better visibility into cash flow across multiple networks. Track will help connect all types of payments within the platform while also connecting purchase order and invoice information.
Mastercard Track has already been integrated with the National Trade Platform in Singapore. It facilitates secure and efficient electronic payments between buyers and suppliers, helping to strengthen the country's position as the leading trading hub for the region.
