BARCELONA, SPAIN – MARCH 1: View of Mastercard Inc. logo on its booth during Mobile World Congress on March 1, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Joan Cross Garcia/Corbis via Getty Images)
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MasterCard said on Tuesday it agreed to acquire Minna Technologies, a software company that makes it easier for consumers to manage subscriptions.
The move comes as Mastercard and its main payment network rival Visa are rapidly trying to expand their core credit and debit card businesses into technology services such as cybersecurity, fraud prevention and bank payments.
Mastercard declined to disclose financial details of the deal, which is currently under regulatory review.
The payments giant said the deal, along with other initiatives it is working on around subscriptions, will allow it to offer consumers a way to access all their subscriptions in a single view – whether in a banking app or in a central “hub” Inside.
Headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, Minna Technologies develops technology that helps consumers manage subscriptions within their banking apps and websites, regardless of which payment method they use to subscribe.
The company says it works with some of the largest financial institutions in the world today. It already counts Mastercard as a major partner as well as its competitor visa.
“These teams and technologies will add to a broader set of tools to help manage merchants’ relationships with consumers and minimize disruption to their experience,” Mastercard said in a blog post on Tuesday.
Today, consumers often need to manage numerous subscriptions to multiple services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney Plus. Having multiple subscriptions can make it difficult to cancel because consumers may end up forgetting which subscriptions they were paying for and when.
Mastercard notes that this could have a negative impact on merchants, as consumers who cannot easily cancel their subscriptions will end up calling their banks and requesting payment freezes.
According to Juniper Research, global subscriptions are 6.8 billion and are expected to jump to 9.3 billion by 2028.
Financial services giants such as Mastercard have been rapidly evolving their product portfolios to stay competitive with emerging fintech companies that are offering more convenient, digitally native ways to manage consumers’ money management needs.
In 2020, Mastercard acquired Finicity, a US financial technology company that enables third parties such as financial technology companies or other banks to access consumers’ banking information and make payments on their behalf.
Earlier this year, the company announced that it would tokenize all cards issued on the European network by 2030 – in other words, as a consumer you will no longer have to manually enter your card details information and simply use your fingerprint to verify your identity when making payments.
Meanwhile, Visa is also trying to stay competitive with fintech challengers. Last month, the company launched a new service called Visa A2A, which makes it easier for consumers to set up and manage direct debits – paying directly from your bank account rather than through a card.
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