Agreement between Unicredit and Mastercard for a global expansion of their payments partnership.
“It is the first time that a large commercial bank has implemented one multimarket strategy with only one payment circuit of this size in Europe. This agreement combines UniCredit's ability to leverage the strength of the group's 13 banks acting as a single institution and Mastercard's experience in the card payments space,” Unicredit underlines in a statement. In fact, the agreement involves 13 banks, present in 12 markets, and concerns all payment card products, for a total of 20 million cards.
As expected, the expansion of the relationship between the parties will lead payment innovation, improve the digital experience for customers and allow Unicredit to provide “all cardholders with a first-rate offer, with a simplified product proposition, an optimized digital experience with a complete suite of in-app solutions and the development of a dedicated approach to innovation, increasing the payment choice for customers through multiple payment solutions”, continues the bank.
The partnership then establishes the combination of insights and resources, with a focus on the implementation of new projects on common ESG objectives.
Orcel: "Agreement embodies the essence of Unicredit Unlocked"
“This partnership embodies the essence of Unicredit Unlocked and a commitment to leverage the strength of our multi-market footprint as a comprehensive offering for the benefit of customers,” he said Andrea Orcel, CEO of UniCredit. Our geographical presence and Mastercard's experience in this sector allow us not only to simplify our partnerships and contracts, but also to improve our digital offer, security and products for all of our current and future cardholders. This is a perfect example of the new way of managing projects at UniCredit, bringing benefits to all companies in a disciplined way and acting as one company.”
Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard, he added: “Unicredit has been an important partner of ours for many years. Together we have created concrete solutions that help people and businesses across Europe. This expanded relationship will build on this experience to bring new innovations to UniCredit cardholders.”
