Mastercard (MA) Tie-up to Automate Expense Process in Asia Pacific

Mastercard Incorporated MA recently teamed up with SAP Concur to provide automated expense and invoice management process for banks, companies and government agencies across Asia Pacific.

Notably, SAP Concur has been making every effort to automate and integrate daily processes through its advanced solutions. This, in turn, has been enriching experience for corporate travel booking, expense management and invoice processing.

The latest partnership has integrated the concur management expertise of SAP Concur with Mastercard’s extensive payments network and market-leading comprehensive solutions and services with an aim to benefit transactions with corporate cards. Following the integration, the issuing customers of Mastercard will benefit from accelerated processing of corporate payments.

Further, the alliance will result in leading transaction solutions being launched, which can be utilized by businesses and governments across Asia Pacific. These solutions will bridge the gap between commercial card providers and their clients. The tools and insights created as a result of the latest integration focuses on easing of reconciliation and payments process. The same will also aid on putting a check on costs and facilitate prudent expense management.

Shares of Mastercard have gained 2.5% in a year against the industry’s decline of 3.2%.

Other companies in the same space, namely, Visa Inc. V have rallied 1.3% in a year’s time, while that of Global Payments Inc. GPN and The Western Union Company WU have lost 3.1% and 18.9%, respectively, in the same time period.

Moreover, the latest move of Mastercard seems to be time opportune in the light of rapidly growing digital economy, wherein automation across the business payment ecosystem has been of utmost priority. The company has been partnering with several organizations and rolling out cost-effective solutions for tapping the current prospects in the digital payments space of Asia Pacific. Also, SAP Concur seems to be the apt partner for Mastercard in addressing the need of businesses and governments to promote greater transparency across payments and develop credit lines.

Furthermore, this is not the first time that the global payments provider has put its best foot forward to automate the expense process for its clients. In September 2020, the company joined forces with Emburse to roll out an integrated solution, which intended to streamline the expense process for benefiting Mastercard corporate cardholders using Amazon Business customers. The company has also been heavily investing in the B2B payments space and real-time payments functionality, considering the rapid shift of the payments industry from physical to digital mode.

Notably, Mastercard carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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