Zeta partners Mastercard to shake up credit card issuance
Fintech start-up Zeta has formed a five-year partnership with payments giant Mastercard.
Mastercard says the partnership will provide modern credit card processing at scale
At the core of the partnership is an agreement to “go-to-market jointly to launch credit cards with issuers worldwide on Zeta’s modern, cloud-native, and fully API-ready credit processing stack”.
The payments giant has also invested $30 million, alongside other investors, into Zeta. This investment follows Zeta’s $250 million Series C led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank last year, which valued the company at $1.45 billion.
Zeta co-founder and CEO Bhavin Turakhia says the firm is “fundamentally rewiring how issuers launch credit card programs by offering new paradigms over legacy mainframe systems”.
Zeta’s Tachyon Credit processing stack spans the entire credit card programme lifecycle including issuance, core, payments, BNPL loans, fraud, risk and rewards.
With both partners pre-configuring key capabilities at the backend, Zeta says issuers will be able to launch cards “much faster”.
Mastercard executive vice president for products and innovation in APAC, Sandeep Malhotra, says as people shop and bank online more than ever before, the partnership with Zeta “will provide modern credit card processing capabilities at scale that will maximise the safety, security and convenience of e-commerce, online banking and contactless transactions”.
Mastercard and Zeta began working together following its involvement in Mastercard’s global start-up engagement programme Start Path.
Zeta is now a member of Mastercard’s developers partner network Engage, which will give it access to the Mastercard network and allow it to integrate with or bundle in Mastercard products and services.
