What is MasterCard?
MasterCard is a global credit card network that regulates and processes credit/debit/prepaid cards. It is of the four major credit card networks, including Visa, Deliver, and American Express. In 2019, MasterCard earned a total revenue of $16.9 billion, with a payment volume of $6.5 trillion. MasterCard’s main products include consumer credit, consumer debit, prepaid cards, and commercial product business.
Understanding MasterCard
MasterCard network itself doesn’t issue cards to individuals and businesses. Financial institutions, in turn, do. For example, banks globally contact MasterCard so to sign up for a partnership agreement. Then, they get a right to issue MasterCard credit cards. Each issuer maintains own regulations for the MasterCard cards. That is to say, each particular bank has a right to choose customers to which it offers MasterCard cards.
MasterCard partners with individual merchants as well. E-commerce merchants who accept MasterCard as a payment method cards pay MasterCard Inc. a transaction fee per each customer transaction. This fee is a part of the cost of the network processing services that the MasterCard company offers.
Each MasterCard card requires a MasterCard payment processing network to process transactions. Cooperating with MasterCard as a payment processing network enables payments to be taken electronically and debited—or credited—to a cardholder’s account. All MasterCard cards are designed with a unique 16-digit number. The latter is placed on the top of the card along with a microchip. It strengthens cardholder’s security and minimizes the risk of card fraud. Let’s sum it up:
The main benefits of implementing MasterCard as a payment method at the checkout:
- Along with Visa card, MasterCard is the most popular card for online payments worldwide;
- The majority of banks and acquirers support Mastercards;
- MasterCard has a mproved security using 3-D Secure
- MasterCard supports all currencies.
How to start accepting MasterCard on my website/e-store?
To start accepting MasterCard as your payment method you need to find the right PSP. At Ikajo, we support MasterCard and are always here for you to open a merchant account. Once your account gets approved by the bank and compliance, you can add MasterCard as a payment method at the checkout page. Using MasterCard is beneficial for those merchants who want to provide secure and fast payments for their customers globally. It is better to combine MasterCard with Visa. This way you will increase conversion and let your clients pay the way they used to. Those networks that Visa and Mastercard use process thousands of transactions per second, with the capacity to process far more.
