Money in Motion: Inside Mastercard's New SME Cross-Border Payments Report
By Ali Paterson · 26 September 2026
Quick Summary
Pratik Khowala, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard, introduces Money in Motion, a new global study conducted by Bain & Company that surveys over 1,000 SMEs across 11 trade corridors. The report launches on the Mastercard website ahead of Sibos 2026. Khowala also explains the hypothesis his team carried into the research, and where the findings confirmed, and sharpened, what Mastercard already believed about why SMEs choose a cross-border payments provider.
What is the Money in Motion report and where can you find it?
Money in Motion is a global study run by Bain & Company on behalf of Mastercard, surveying more than 1,000 SMEs across 11 trade corridors. It will be officially launched on the Mastercard website ahead of Sibos 2026 in Miami. "It's a really, really exciting report," Khowala says.
What was Mastercard's hypothesis going in?
Based on conversations with customers and SMEs, Khowala's team went into the research believing that speed, transparency and cost, built on a foundation of trust, are what SMEs weigh when choosing a cross-border payments provider. The report set out to test the order of preference SMEs actually place on each of those factors.
What did the research confirm?
The results confirmed the broad framework but reordered it: trust and speed ranked higher than cost, which Khowala says runs against what most people would intuitively expect. That single finding, more than any other, sets up the rest of the report's conclusions about how providers need to compete for SME business.
FF NEWS TAKE:
A report is only as useful as the assumption it overturns, and Money in Motion overturns a common one: that SMEs are primarily cost-driven. If trust and speed genuinely outrank cost for more than 1,000 businesses across 11 corridors, that is a clear signal to banks and fintechs about where to invest first. Timed to land just ahead of Sibos, it is designed to be the talking point Mastercard wants on the show floor in Miami.