Mastercard and Scale have expanded their collaboration to streamline card issuance for fintechs and non-financial institutions across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The expanded arrangement introduces a unified integration model designed to reduce the complexity involved in launching virtual and physical card programmes. The move builds on a prior agreement between the two companies announced in 2024, progressing from that earlier stage towards active market deployment.
Addressing structural barriers to card issuance
In many African markets, organisations seeking to offer card-based payment solutions have typically been required to coordinate separately with payment networks, BIN sponsors, and issuing processors, a process that can be both time-consuming and operationally demanding. The single-integration approach developed by Mastercard and Scale consolidates onboarding, processing, and compliance requirements into one pathway, reducing the number of touch points that fintechs and non-FIs must manage independently.
Under the arrangement, Mastercard contributes access to its global payment network, market expertise, and relationships with banking partners. Scale provides the issuing infrastructure, customer onboarding capabilities, and regulatory support. The combined offering is intended to allow businesses to bring card programmes to market more efficiently, without requiring them to build or manage the underlying operational infrastructure directly.
In addition, the collaboration is positioned within a broader context of financial inclusion across Sub-Saharan Africa, where access to formal payment instruments remains uneven. Through the process of lowering the barriers to card programme deployment, the initiative aims to support fintechs and non-FIs in extending digital financial services to consumers and businesses that remain outside the formal financial system.
The expanded collaboration covers a geographically diverse set of markets, each with distinct regulatory environments and levels of payments infrastructure maturity. Furthermore, both institutions will continue to focus on meeting the needs, preferences, and demands of clients and users in an ever-evolving market, while prioritising the process of remaining compliant with the regulatory requirements and laws of the industry as well.
