Mastercard Bill Qkr will enable merchants, acquirers, payment facilitators and service providers globally by providing them with leading, faster card-based bill payment solutions and tailored expertise to improve the consumer experience
2C2P, AXS, CardUp, Curacel and FitBank will be among the first to use the new end-to-end bill payment service
Today, 89% of people have paid or are planning to pay their bills using digital tools, covering expenses from insurance to utilities and TV/phone packages. Despite this, several challenges remain, including a cumbersome user experience, limited options for card payments and wider security concerns.
Many billers, including global telcos like AT&T and digital platforms like Adobe, already embrace card payments and benefit from lower fraud and reduced payment declines. However, to advance on these benefits for more billers and consumers, Mastercard today unveiled Bill Qkr, a comprehensive solution that pairs Mastercard’s payments expertise with its leading technology.
Mastercard Bill Qkr helps merchants, acquirers, payment facilitators (PayFacs) and service providers (PSPs) grow into new markets and unlock new opportunities. The solution has been designed to simplify customer payment processes, enhance trust, and improve the success of collections – meeting the needs of customers wherever they are. It offers flexible, cost-effective, and efficient options for participating customers.
The solution solves for a range of common pain-points:
- Tokenization can allow cards to be securely stored on a merchant’s site for recurring payments.
- When a card expires, the merchant can be securely updated with a new token, allowing future transactions to flow seamlessly.
- For fixed, recurring payments, such as monthly insurance premiums, billers can automatically submit ongoing invoices, enhancing efficiencies.
- For bills that change month-to-month, consumers can use QR codes on their paper bills or online statements, simply click a button and use their saved payment credentials to pay.
- Guest checkout can be made simple and easy with Click to Pay, bringing the same convenience that people experience in the physical world online.
- Merchants can experience greater peace-of-mind by accepting card payments, with quick and guaranteed payment, eliminating concerns over collections.
- Merchants can achieve higher approval rates and deliver an enhanced cardholder experience by leveraging intelligent guidance to prevent addressable declined payments.
In addition to this end-to-end digital experience, participating customers will benefit from access to Mastercard’s wider base of partners to deliver a range of innovation services. This includes product development, design sprints and prototype design, as well as early access to new product pilots and ongoing implementation support.
An initial set of strategic partners across Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America will leverage Mastercard Bill Qkr:
- 2C2P, which offers the easyBills platform in Southeast Asia for easy consumer access to digital goods and services, including utility bill payments, mobile top-ups, tax payments, and gift cards, will enable recurring Mastercard payments on the easyBills+ application in Thailand, bringing greater convenience and timely payments for its users.
- AXS, a leading bill payment aggregator in Singapore catering to the bill payment needs of both consumers and organizations on a multi-channel ubiquitous platform. Together with Mastercard, AXS has launched multiple pioneering initiatives such as tokenized payments, rewards programs, and Mastercard sonic branding. A new addition to this list of initiatives will be the capability to automate recurring bill payments on AXS mobile app.
- CardUp (a subsidiary company of Funding Societies), a payments solutions provider serving Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong focusing on uncarded verticals such as rental, education and taxes, will leverage Mastercard’s recurring payment capabilities to offer a better customer experience.
- Curacel, an AI-powered infrastructure provider in Africa, supporting over 30 insurers across 10 markets, will integrate digital payment acceptance into their platform.
- FitBank, a leading Brazilian payment technology provider serving over 12,000 billers across Latin America, is expanding its services with Mastercard’s tokenization and Secure Card on File technology. This will enable secure and seamless digital payments through global chat platforms, offering more than just bill payments and enhancing the overall payment experience.
“Card-based payments are chosen daily by consumers, yet they remain significantly underutilized for bill payments,” said Jennifer Marriner, executive vice president, Global Acceptance at Mastercard. “With Mastercard Bill Qkr, we’re bringing our cutting-edge payment technologies together with our longstanding, global approach to collaboration. This allows us to not only innovate in bill payments for our customers, but also to create better ways to transact and strengthen trust for the wider ecosystem.”
Mastercard Bill Qkr is live and available globally.
