Barclays will be the first large bank partner to offer the Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, a global real-time corporate payments system the card network is building.
Barclaycard Payments will begin offering Track BPS in the U.K. and continental Europe to automate instant business-to-business payments beginning later this year, Mastercard announced.
The move is a milestone in Mastercard’s ambitious plans
Mastercard earlier said it would take years to fully build out Track BPS, and because Mastercard isn’t directly selling the solution to corporations it requires creating a base of third-party distributors. Mastercard’s goal is to make the service accessible to large and small businesses.
Corporations using Track BPS will be able to choose the best available rail for sending or receiving payment for any type of invoice. Payments will move instantly, accompanied by rich transaction data and bypassing the need for manual reconciliation, Mastercard said in a press release late last week.
The new agreement calls for the London-based Barclays to act as a payments agent, signing up corporations to use the service for accounts payable and accounts receivable payments, Mastercard said.
Mastercard Track BPS is based on account-to-account payments technology Mastercard acquired from European providers including
"Our partnership with Barclaycard Payments will work at scale to give businesses a multirail experience to manage working capital, get better quality information and improve payment security,” James Anderson, Mastercard’s executive vice president of commercial and B2B solutions, said in the release.
“This announcement further strengthens our relationship with Mastercard, and I look forward to continuing to drive transformational change across our industry to benefit businesses,” Marc Pettican, president of Barclaycard Payments, said in the release.
Other Mastercard Track BPS distribution partners Mastercard announced last year include bzPay, Transcard, Girasol Payment Solutions and Network International.
