Mastercard has launched Advanced B2B Analytics, an AI-powered supplier analytics platform, with Absa Group and Emirates NBD as early adopters.
The new Mastercard platform focuses on card acceptance analytics and is aimed at card issuers and their corporate clients. It draws on accounts payable data to produce supplier payment insights within minutes. Issuers can use the information to determine which suppliers could move to commercial card payments and to plan their outreach accordingly. The company’s goal is to help issuers grow commercial card spend, generate additional revenue, and support corporate clients in managing working capital.
Addressing friction in supplier payments
Supplier payments remain a recurring problem for banks and corporates. Mastercard notes that issuers and corporate buyers often have no structured, data-led way to identify and prioritise suppliers that may accept cards. Fragmented data and manual processes slow down conversion and keep companies dependent on less efficient payment methods. Supplier expectations, meanwhile, are changing. Nearly half of suppliers expect buyers to ask to pay by card more often in the coming years.
Marc Pettican, global head of Corporate Solutions at Mastercard, said businesses hold large volumes of payment data that often stay fragmented and underused. He added that the platform combines these insights with the company's commercial payments experience. The aim is to help issuers see where card acceptance can create value, engage suppliers more effectively, and achieve measurable growth.
How the platform works
The platform is built around acceptance propensity scoring. This feature runs on an underlying AI-powered infrastructure and ranks suppliers by how likely they are to accept card payments. Interactive dashboards and analytics turn accounts payable data into usable information. Greater visibility into payment flows is intended to support working capital decisions.
Users can also draw on the Mastercard Advisors & Transformation team for recommendations on supplier prioritisation and growth strategies. Mastercard says that pairing analytics with consulting is meant to streamline procurement processes, reduce costs, and accelerate commercial card acceptance.
Early adopters and market opportunity
Absa Group and Emirates NBD are among the first financial institutions to offer the platform to corporate clients. The banks will use it to identify supplier acceptance opportunities, increase virtual card adoption, and improve efficiency across commercial payments.
For financial institutions, Mastercard presents the platform as a way to deepen client relationships. In addition, the company also positions it as a route to capturing part of an addressable B2B payments opportunity it estimates at approximately USD 80 trillion.
Part of a broader data and AI strategy
Mastercard describes Advanced B2B Analytics as the first foundational B2B capability in its plan to embed intelligence across the commercial payments lifecycle, connecting payment, acceptance, and performance insights. The company intends to extend these capabilities to suppliers and acquirers over time.
While the initial release serves issuers and their corporate buyers, the planned extension would carry the analytics to the other side of the B2B card transaction. The launch is part of Mastercard's wider strategy of building data, analytics, and AI into payment infrastructure, alongside products such as Mastercard Virtual C-Suite.
