Mastercard Strive signs up 15 service providers

MASTERCARD’s partnership with Boost Capital has onboarded 15 financial service providers that it said would bolster access to digital financial services of more than 10,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the Philippines.

“Small business owners can focus on growing their businesses rather than waiting in line at a bank to fill out an application,” Boost co-founder Gordon Peters said in a statement on Thursday. “Instead, they just chat with the bank through Messenger or Viber. It’s a huge time saver for women entrepreneurs, and a huge expansion in the customer base for the banks.”

The program, called Mastercard Strive, onboarded five times more partners than its initial goal. Companies include Asialink, Paymongo, UNO Digital Bank, RAFI Microfinance and Cantilan Bank, which together serve more than 25 million clients nationwide.

“Boost’s white-labeled tech lets financial service providers expand their customer reach even further, so they can now onboard small businesses anytime and anywhere by using Facebook Messenger and Viber for bank applications and payment processing,” Mastercard said in the statement.

Mastercard Strive, which is a portfolio of philanthropic programs, supports the digitalization of small businesses globally. The Mastercard Strive program in the Philippines is delivered by Caribou.

“We launched this program because micro and small businesses, especially those led by women, are a vital part of the Philippine economy,” Mr. Peters said. “Boost’s tech can address the barriers they face in accessing financial services.”

He said they expect 15 partner-companies to launch in less than four months Boost’s chat-based onboarding for loans, savings accounts and payment processing for small business customers. “Between them, these financial service providers serve more than 25 million clients already, so we’re optimistic we’ll impact far more than the 10,000 small businesses we initially set out to serve.”

He added that demand was strong for Boost’s chat-based technology because banks and payment systems in the Philippines want to serve MSMEs. 

Boost co-founder Lucinda Revell said Mastercard allowed them to enhance their artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which now includes advanced dialect recognition and expanded document validation capabilities. — Aaron Michael C. Sy