Dive Brief:

• MasterCard and Wells Fargo jointly announced that business and government customers of Wells Fargo Treasury Management and Wells Fargo Merchant Services can now use the Mastercard Send global personal payments platform to quickly and securely transmit money to consumers and small businesses in the U.S.
• The service is enabled through an application programming interface connection to Mastercard Send, and allows senders to digitize payments that typically would have been handled by check or cash, allowing for real-time or near real-time payments, rather than less efficient, more time-consuming methods.
• Merchants and similar businesses can use the service to send rebates, e-marketplace payouts, shared economy payouts to sellers, as well as other payments, MasterCard and Wells Fargo said. Insurance claims, social benefits and tax refunds also can be sent in real time.

Dive Insight:

This announcement has applications across a broad array of industries, not just retail. But it helps retailers contribute to creating more positive customer experiences by allowing them to send rebates and other payments customers are due in much more rapid fashion.

The rebates examples is just one of the applications, but a pertinent one, because it can sometimes take many days or weeks for customers to receive rebate payments, and Mastercard Send allows the payouts to happen immediately (theoretically, at least). As companies like Ibotta and Ebates have changed and elevated rebates program in recent years amid the rise of loyalty and rewards programs, the promise of real-time payouts on rebates can make them even more relevant for both merchants and their customers.

Merchants also can use Mastercard Send to quickly pay sales partners of all kinds — an increasingly handy capability as the e-commerce universe is home to all kinds of multi-seller marketplaces and shared revenue models.

Essentially, it can help many merchants leverage some of the same digital payments capabilities that their customers use to make purchases from them, but in a service and format more specifically designed for business-to-consumer payments.