Mastercard is to open an A2A instant payments sandbox for UK banks to experiment with new payment methods.
Using the sandbox and Mastercard's latest A2A payments technology, banks will be able to test new flows, including retail and digital assets, across person to person, person to merchant, and business to business use cases.
As an example, Mastercard says the sandbox will enable banks and fintechs to implement a “5-leg credit transfer” with confirmation of funds, meaning that a consumer can make a retail real-time payment with the merchant getting instant confirmation of payment.
The sandbox will also apply international ISO20022 standards and the opportunity to test the extended data fields supported for fraud detection and other advancements.
Peter Reynolds, EVP, Mastercard real time payments says: “Account-to-account payments in the UK are already an enormous part of the UK’s financial landscape. The Mastercard A2A instant payments Sandbox opens our innovative technology to our partners to develop and test new potential services. Alongside the UK government’s National Payments Vision, we’re setting out a bold vision of the future in A2A real-time payments”.
The move comes after rival card scheme Visa rolled out new technology aimed at the UK's burgeoning account-to-account market through its new pay-by-bank offering.