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How Mastercard and Citizens are Pushing the Customer Experience Forward Through Payments Innovations
The Facts
Digital payments are transforming the financial industry by helping money move faster and more securely, while also delivering an increasingly frictionless experience and bringing the benefits of the digital economy to more people. Digital wallets are growing more ubiquitous, with analysts predicting 4.4 billion unique users by 2025. Before long, people will not just rely on them for payment, but also as a form of digital identity, or even as their house key.
Mastercard is applying new technologies – be it AI, blockchain, cloud, open banking, the metaverse or beyond – to continue developing new products, in tandem with partners, that deliver value and meet consumers and businesses on this digital journey.
Earlier this year, Mastercard and Citizens announced an expanded partnership that reflects a commitment to continued innovation, marking one of the largest payments industry shifts of the past decades. Citizens moved its preeminent debit portfolio to Mastercard, rendering Mastercard its partner for all card portfolios, also including credit and commercial. Mastercard and Citizens are working together to foster advancements in payments technologies, fraud prevention tools, and open banking to benefit consumers and businesses.
To kick off the relationship, Citizens recently introduced the first credit card in the US to include Mastercard’s Touch Card, a notch system designed to bring security and independence to cardholders who are blind and partially sighted.
The Analysis
This partnership is not a marriage of convenience. It has evolved over several years and is founded in shared values and shared interests, including innovation and customer-centricity.
Mastercard and Citizens are both companies that are focused on people. And people’s expectations around payments are evolving rapidly —particularly as an influx of new technology redefines what’s possible. Rather than adapting technology for technology’s sake, it’s essential for financial institutions to understand customer needs on a deep level and respond with products that provide choice, flexibility, and absolute security. Innovation must push the customer experience forward.
“Our partnership with Mastercard is rooted in the shared belief of putting people at the heart of innovation,” said Brendan Coughlin, Vice Chairman and Head of Consumer Banking. “At Citizens, digital innovation starts with solving for the customer need, using technology and data to deliver more value to people across their financial lifetime.”
As evidenced by Citizens’ new Mastercard Touch Card offering, innovation is also about empowerment. Over 12 million people in the US are blind or partially sighted. Yet there are few effective ways for the visually impaired to quickly determine whether they are holding a credit, debit, or prepaid card. Mastercard has created a system of notches on the side of the card which allow customers to instantly identify their card by feel —rounded for debit, squared for credit and triangular for prepaid. The Touch Card feature will be rolled out across all of Citizens’ debit and credit Mastercard products.
The View From Citizens
One key facet of this partnership is the active role that Citizens and Mastercard take within the communities they serve, including supporting small businesses, who employ 90% of the US population and are looking for opportunities to grow. Citizens and Mastercard will work together to support the health and growth of small business in the communities they serve, including access to specialized resources like Mastercard Digital Doors®, a program that helps small businesses accelerate digitally.
Since becoming a public company in 2015, Citizens has expanded rapidly through strategic acquisitions, including Investors Bancorp and the East Coast branches of HSBC, as well as innovations in everyday banking, such Citizens Peace of Mind, a deposit feature that gives customers the ability to reverse the expense of unexpected overdraft fees. And Citizens was first to innovate in the student loan industry with its national education refinance products.
Each step of Citizens’ journey has been grounded in building a bank of the future and delivering a world-class customer experience.
Quoteworthy
“It’s a natural expansion of a partnership built on our shared commitment to inclusion, access, and innovation. Digitizing payments and making them safe, seamless, and secure is paramount, but we’re also eager to collaborate with Citizens to create a great experience for its customers and deliver more opportunities for everyone to participate in the digital economy,” says Linda Kirkpatrick, Mastercard North America president.
Now What?
Citizens’ launch of Mastercard’s Touch Card feature in the US is only the beginning of this collaboration. What it signals is the meeting of consumers where they are – defined by a digital payments experience that is frictionless, inclusive, and secure. The future of commerce entails providing choice and optionality, combined with unquestionable security.