Mastercard trials Payment on Delivery with PNC Bank
Mastercard has launched a payment pilot allowing businesses to pay a supplier in real-time when receiving goods or services, and has partnered with Pittsburgh-headquartered PNC Bank to test it out.
Mastercard wants to become more than a card company
The new system, called Payment on Delivery, will be deployed to industries with complex distribution networks and supply chains.
Mastercard hopes that it will solve challenges caused by the prevalence of cash and cheques, including onerous paperwork, manual processes and complicated reconciliation largely driven by the use of cash and checks.
The first use-case will focus on alcohol distribution. Mastercard will partner with enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider, Rutherford & Associates, to facilitate payments in the regulation-ridden, wine and spirits distribution industry.
PNC Bank is the fifth-largest bank in the United States by number of branches, and fourth largest by number of ATMs. It operates in 19 states, and offers asset management, wealth management, estate planning, loan servicing alongside its retail operations.
Speaking of the deal, Chris Ward, executive vice president and head of product & operations, PNC Treasury Management, says: “PNC has been at the forefront of real-time payments, and we are pleased to be able to extend request-for-payment capabilities across the real-time payment rails.”
Mastercard announced the $3.19 billion acquisition of Nets Group’s real-time payments business back in August. The firm said that the deal would help shift it from card payments to offering a “multi-rail” platform service.
It also bought up cross-border payments firm Transfast in July, something which the firm said at the time would help to bolster its ability to offer democratised real-time cross border payments.
Ron Shultz, executive vice president for new payment flows, North America, Mastercard, adds: “Consumers are used to the convenience of buying and paying for things with a simple swipe on their mobile devices. Businesses, on the other hand, follow a clunky and inefficient process when it comes to payments.”
“Our real-time payment capabilities connects buyers and sellers to enable payments to happen in real-time, and provides them with real-time information to drive efficiency, control, security, and transparency on the backend.”
