Mastercard wants to tap into the greater ecosystem of fintech innovators, and it hopes to accelerate that collaboration with a new API-based digital platform. Dubbed the Mastercard Innovation Engine, the platform is built to offer plug-and-play integration between Mastercard digital assets and financial technology services in a seamless experience for consumers. It’s kicking the platform off with a partnership with two fintech companies to create a contextual and more personalized way for consumers to understand, interact with, and maximize card benefits and rewards in a real-time fashion. For example, the solution would be able to trigger movie-related benefits ahead of a popular film release to a cardholder who sees a lot of movies.
The new Mastercard Contextual Engagement Solution uses the API platform to knit together the data contextualization from Flybits, and the conversational AI capabilities form Casisto with the data of Mastercard cardholders. The platform is meant to facilitate many more similar collaborative efforts:
“Consumer expectations are changing rapidly, and as a result we must keep pace. Given where Mastercard sits at the epicenter of payments, we recognize that we can serve as a hub for scaled innovation delivered through our issuing partners.” — Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President, Core Products, Mastercard
