Ericsson and Mastercard announce major payment alliance

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Mobile Finance; 18 February 2026; 2051 views

Telecommunications technology giant Ericsson and Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, have announced a collaboration they claim can reshape how money moves across the world – beginning with the Middle East and Africa.

It integrates the Ericsson Fintech Platform (for mobile financial services) with Mastercard Move, Mastercard’s portfolio of money movement solutions.

The collaboration, the partners say, will empower telecom service providers, banks and fintechs to expand digital wallet capabilities, launch new payment services, and reach unbanked or underbanked communities.

Ericsson explains that its pre-integrated application programming interfaces (APIs), cloud-native deployment and compliance-ready infrastructure simplify fintech connectivity to Mastercard Move.

These capabilities reduce technology complexity, lower operational barriers – by simplifying integration, deployment and compliance – and accelerate time to market for new payment services.

As the companies point out, financial inclusion and accessibility are key focuses of the collaboration. Mastercard Move enables money movement across 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 17 billion endpoints, and supporting transactions in 150 currencies.

Ericsson’s fintech platform operates in 22 countries, serving more than 120 million active users and processing more than four billion transactions every month across digital wallets, payments, remittances, lending and loyalty services – all backed by enterprise-grade security.

Mastercard Move’s integration into Ericsson’s Fintech Platform aims to accelerate the adoption of digital payments and expand participation in the digital economy.

The global rollout will begin in the Middle East and Africa where, Ericsson and Mastercard point out, demand for mobile money, remittances and interoperable payment services is particularly strong.