Cross-border payments are becoming more visible to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as they trade across more markets and compare the speed, certainty and user experience offered by different providers. That changes the competitive problem for banks: a payment that once sat largely in the back office can increasingly influence whether an SME keeps more of its financial relationship with the same institution. Mastercard’s 2026 Money in Motion research found that 91% of surveyed internationally trading SMEs were considering switching cross border payment providers within two years. Among businesses that had recently changed providers, 67% cited faster transactions and more reliable settlement as a reason. Trust remained the leading selection criterion, followed closely by speed. Pratik Khowala, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard, said banks already hold an advantage because customers trust them. The business question is whether Mastercard Move can help those banks close the speed and user experience gap by reducing the number of intermediaries between payment systems and extending direct connectivity across corridors. Direct connectivity is meant to remove layers rather than add another one Khowala said the traditional cross border model can lose transparency, add cost and lengthen the time it takes money to reach the recipient as payments pass through multiple intermediaries. Mastercard Move’s approach is to build more direct connections into payment ecosystems so that banks and fintechs can use that infrastructure without having to assemble each corridor themselves. Khowala identified trust as Mastercard Move's first distinctive value and its network role as the second. Banks and fintechs can build individual connections, but doing so corridor by corridor is difficult to scale. Mastercard is trying to provide an infrastructure layer across those connections, allowing financial institutions to retain the customer facing service while using the network to move money. The proposition matters because bank accounts, card networks, fintech platforms and domestic instant payment systems increasingly overlap. Khowala's argument was that direct connectivity should remove intermediary steps rather than add another layer. The TIPS pilot tests the infrastructure model The clearest current test is Mastercard Move’s participation in a cross-currency pilot on TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), the Eurosystem platform that settles instant payments in central bank money around the clock. Conducted with Danmarks Nationalbank and Sveriges Riksbank, the pilot is testing instant payments between currencies on TIPS, with the two currency legs processed and settled simultaneously in central bank money. Mastercard announced in June that Mastercard Move was among the first participants to process transactions using the pilot functionality. Khowala said Mastercard is working with one or two banks in the pilot but could not identify them. He said the tests are examining data transparency, speed and system resilience, as well as how Mastercard can operate efficiently with central bank infrastructure. For Mastercard, TIPS is the first pilot in a broader effort to connect directly into payment ecosystems and central bank infrastructures, testing whether financial institutions can gain access without building and managing every connection independently. Banks have trust but need to close the experience gap Khowala linked the infrastructure investment directly to changing SME behaviour. He said Mastercard’s research confirmed that speed, cost, transparency and trust all matter, but trust and speed are becoming particularly important in provider selection. Banks, he said, already have the trust of their SME customers. Where fintechs have often moved faster is in user experience and speed, helped in part by building more direct connectivity. Mastercard Move is intended to combine those strengths: banks keep the customer relationship and trusted position, while a single connection to Mastercard gives them access to faster and more transparent cross border movement. If SMEs increasingly treat payment performance as part of the overall banking relationship, modernising cross border payments becomes part of customer retention rather than only an operations decision. Regulation and FX still prevent instant payments from becoming universal Direct connectivity does not remove the differences between markets. Khowala said the largest constraint is that each country has its own regulatory requirements, unlike a domestic payment system operating under one framework. Foreign exchange trading and margins add another layer of complexity. He expects newer technologies, including stablecoins and artificial intelligence, to simplify some of those frictions, but did not suggest that they remove the underlying regulatory requirements. The practical challenge remains connecting faster infrastructure while respecting the rules, currencies and compliance obligations of each market. The TIPS pilot therefore provides an early test of whether direct connectivity can improve data transparency, speed and system resilience. The network proposition now has to scale beyond the pilot Khowala's argument brings the customer and infrastructure questions together. Banks already possess much of the trust; Mastercard is trying to provide the network connectivity that improves the payment experience without requiring banks to construct every corridor themselves. The TIPS pilot is an early test of that model. The question is whether Mastercard can extend direct connectivity broadly enough, with sufficient resilience and compliance, for banks to translate their existing trust with SMEs into a more competitive cross border payment experience.
