Thought Machine Becomes First End-to-End Core Banking Partner With Mastercard, Helping FIs Modernise

Payments giant Mastercard is expanding its existing partnership with Thought Machine, the cloud-native banking technology firm, to deliver high-quality payments and core banking capabilities to financial institutions looking to modernise their technology stack.‍By pairing Mastercard’s global network and digital solutions with Thought Machine’s core banking and payments platform, the two organisations hope to help financial institutions 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.Paul Taylor, founder and CEO of Thought Machine“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,” explained Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of 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.”Thought Machine explained that its core banking platform is the critical back-end technology for product and account management and the customer ledger.!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 of 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.”Extending partnershipsWhile Thought Machine becomes Mastercard’s first end-to-end core banking partner, this isn’t the first time the two organisations have worked together.In 2020, Thought Machine also participated in the Mastercard Start Path startup engagement programme. In 2022, they also partnered again to launch Vault Payments, an issuer processing solution.Vault Payments was built from scratch as a cloud-native payments processing platform – ensuring the platform is scalable, highly configurable, and can operate in real-time. The platform natively represents payments as ISO20022 messages, and its unique rails-based configuration approach will support any payment type, card, or payment scheme as compatibility expands.Launching initially with support for card issuing and processing on the Mastercard network, Vault Payments supports virtual, physical, and tokenised cards. Vault Payments natively integrates with 3DS providers, card manufacturers, and BIN sponsors and clients can leverage this in a plug-and-play model.