Mastercard and Backbase announce strategic collaboration to accelerate AI-native banking transformation

Amsterdam, 9 September 2026: Mastercard and Backbase are collaborating to help financial institutions strengthen customer engagement, enhance decision-making and advance their digital transformation ambitions through a combination of data insights, cybersecurity and banking technology capabilities.

Through the collaboration, financial institutions will be able to access Mastercard capabilities that support personalization, analytics, customer engagement and cyber resilience alongside the Backbase AI-native Banking Operating System, helping them deliver more connected banking experiences and drive business growth.

As financial institutions continue to modernize their operations and customer experiences, the collaboration provides access to capabilities that support personalization, analytics, customer engagement, and cyber resilience. Together, Mastercard and Backbase are helping banks simplify access to these capabilities while supporting their broader transformation objectives.

Key capabilities available through the collaboration include:

• Dynamic Yield by Mastercard, which can support personalization and customer engagement across digital banking journeys.
• Test & Learn, which can help financial institutions assess the commercial impact of product, pricing, campaign, and customer experience changes.
• SpendingPulse, which can provide macroeconomic and sector-level spending insights to support business decision-making.
• Cyber Quant, which can support cyber risk assessment and resilience conversations with financial institutions.

“By deepening our collaboration with Mastercard, we're accelerating our ability to help banks worldwide harness the full potential of AI. This collaboration goes beyond technology integration - it brings together two ecosystems that, combined, give banks a faster, more trusted path from AI experimentation to real business outcomes. Together, we are helping financial institutions access capabilities that support more personalized customer engagement, stronger decision-making and greater operational resilience."

‍Ricardo Ribelles, VP Collaborations and Alliances at Backbase.

"Banks are moving from AI experimentation to AI execution and the infrastructure underneath that shift matters enormously. Through this collaboration, financial institutions can access Mastercard capabilities that support personalization, analytics, cyber resilience, and customer engagement as they advance their digital transformation journeys. This is how agentic banking moves from proof of concept to production."

‍Selin Bahadirli, Executive Vice President, Services, EEMEA at Mastercard.

Both organizations share a conviction: Agentic AI - where trusted AI systems act on behalf of customers within defined consent parameters - will define the next generation of banking. 

The collaboration builds on Mastercard's broader work to support innovation in digital banking and payments. In late 2025, the company demonstrated a live Agent Pay transaction in the UAE, marking an early milestone for agentic commerce in EEMEA. 

More recently, the company introduced Mastercard Agent Suite to help enterprises build secure, trusted AI-powered experiences across the payments ecosystem.

Together, the companies are working to ensure that agentic banking is not merely a technology experiment, but a governed, secure, and commercially viable capability that financial institutions can deploy with confidence - anywhere in the world.

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About Mastercard

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

www.mastercard.com