Mastercard review: products, technology and pricing (2026)

Mastercard is a payments network company that switches card transactions between the banks that issue cards and the acquirers that serve merchants, in more than 220 countries and territories. It describes itself as a multi-rail technology company: alongside cards it runs account-to-account and real-time payment infrastructure, open finance APIs, the Mastercard Move payout service and, since 2026, stablecoin and AI agent payment services.

Like other card schemes, Mastercard does not issue cards or lend. Banks and fintechs do that, using Mastercard's network, rules and software. Our guide to how card payments work explains the roles in a typical purchase.

At a glance

Key figures

How the platform works

Mastercard calls its core design a four-party network: the account holder, the issuer, the merchant and the acquirer, with Mastercard in the middle. The acquirer sends a purchase into the network, Mastercard switches it to the issuer for a decision, and the response travels back the same way. Clearing and settlement follow, with money moving from issuer to acquirer. Mastercard guarantees settlement on many of those issuer-to-acquirer flows.

On fees, the annual report draws a clear line. Mastercard does not set the interest or fees banks charge cardholders, and does not set what acquirers charge merchants. It does publish default interchange rates, which apply when an issuer and acquirer have not agreed their own terms.

The "multi-rail" label refers to what sits beside the card network. Mastercard offers ACH batch and real-time account-based payments, operates real-time payment infrastructure in several countries, and supports more than 150 currencies, according to its 2025 annual report. Our real-time payments guide explains how those rails differ from card settlement.

MDES tokenisation

The Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) swaps a card number for a network token tied to a device, wallet or merchant. About 40% of Mastercard transactions were tokenised in 2025, the company says. The plumbing is visible in the developer docs:

1. Provisioning. With MDES Token Connect, an issuer's banking app can push a card straight into a wallet, merchant or PSP (a "token requestor"). MDES returns a one-time receipt and a redirect link; the token requestor then swaps the receipt for a token.
2. Pull flow. A wallet can also send the cardholder to the issuer's app to pick a card, then receive the receipt back. Mastercard notes that issuers need push provisioning in place before pull.
3. Security. Sensitive fields such as the card number travel field-level encrypted inside the request payload, and calls are signed with OAuth 1.0a. Mastercard publishes client encryption libraries in Java, Node.js, C#, Python, PHP and Ruby.

A related call returns a Payment Account Reference (PAR), which lets a business link different tokens back to the same underlying account without seeing the card number. Our guide to network tokenisation gives the wider picture.

Click to Pay

Click to Pay is an online checkout built on the EMVCo Secure Remote Commerce standard. A merchant, PSP or gateway acts as the initiator, a digital card facilitator shows the shopper their saved cards, and the issuer enrols the cardholder. Returning shoppers on a recognised device simply confirm a card; on a new device they verify with a passkey or a one-time code. PSPs register merchants through a DPA Registration API, and both merchants and PSPs use Checkout and Confirmations APIs. Mastercard's 2025 annual report says Click to Pay also gives issuers better fraud signals.

Products

Card network and value-added services

Switching remains the base business. On top sit what Mastercard calls value-added services: authentication, fraud and security tools, data and consumer acquisition services. Net revenue from this line rose 23% in 2025, per the January 2026 release.

Open finance and Pay by Bank

Mastercard's open finance platform lets third parties, with the account holder's permission, read bank data or start payments through APIs. The 2025 annual report lists account opening, lending, account-to-account payments and small business use cases. Mastercard Open Finance Pay is the Pay by Bank product: the merchant creates a payment, the shopper picks a bank in the Pay Connect flow and approves with strong customer authentication, and status updates arrive by webhook. It supports one-off payments and variable recurring payments under a mandate. Our open banking payments guide explains the model.

Mastercard Move

Move covers payouts and transfers to cards, accounts and wallets. The 2025 annual report gives more than 17bn endpoints, with more than 60 sending and 155 receiving countries. In October 2026 Mastercard said it expects Move to cover more than 40 currencies in over 200 countries and territories during 2027.

Stablecoins and the Global Money Platform

Mastercard completed its purchase of BVNK, a stablecoin payments infrastructure company, on 3 August 2026. On 15 October 2026 the two launched the Global Money Platform: one API for multi-currency accounts holding fiat and stablecoins side by side, conversion between them, stablecoin-linked cards and local bank payouts through Move. Card issuing on the platform is available in more than 130 countries, and Mastercard named Marqeta among the first integrators. See how stablecoin payments work.

Agent Pay and Agent Pay for Machines

Agent Pay, introduced in 2025, sets out how trusted AI agents can take part in payments. Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), launched on 10 June 2026, extends this to small, frequent payments between software systems. Mastercard lists four building blocks: credentialing each agent, permissioning with programmatic spend limits, transacting, and settling across cards, accounts and stablecoins. More than 30 companies are early adopters, including Adyen, Stripe, Checkout.com and Coinbase.

Developer experience and integrations

Mastercard Developers hosts documentation, API specifications and test tools for each product.

Most merchants reach Mastercard through their acquirer or gateway, so they use these APIs indirectly. Direct users tend to be issuers, issuer processors, wallets, PSPs and payout platforms.

Payment methods, currencies and coverage

Mastercard says it operates in more than 220 countries and territories and supports payments in more than 150 currencies (2025 annual report). Coverage spans credit, debit and prepaid cards, tokenised wallet and online payments, account-to-account and real-time payments in markets where it runs that infrastructure, Pay by Bank through open finance, payouts through Move, and stablecoin accounts through BVNK.

Pricing model

Mastercard does not publish merchant prices, because merchants pay their acquirer, not the network. Its reported net revenue is split into two lines, payment network and value-added services and solutions. Mastercard sets default interchange rates, which apply between issuers and acquirers when they have no bilateral terms. For a merchant, the practical cost depends on whether its acquirer offers blended or interchange-plus pricing; see our card payments guide. Developer API pricing is not listed on the documentation pages we opened.

Recent launches

Regulation in brief

In its 2025 annual report, Mastercard describes itself as a technology company that does not issue cards or extend credit. It says its business is shaped by rules on interchange and surcharging, anti-money laundering and sanctions, data privacy and AI, and account-based payment systems, across the markets where it operates. We could not open the European open finance documentation that names the licensed entity, so that detail is not covered here.

Who it tends to suit

Mastercard's network is used, mostly indirectly, by nearly every business that takes cards. Its APIs tend to suit issuers and issuer processors (MDES, Click to Pay enrolment), PSPs and large merchants (Click to Pay, tokens), payout and remittance platforms (Move) and fintechs that want Pay by Bank or bank data in one integration. Readers comparing networks can see Visa vs Mastercard and our Visa profile. For open banking alternatives, see Plaid vs TrueLayer, and the cards category for more.