Nine in 10 SMEs Are Ready to Switch Cross-Border Payments Providers: Mastercard

Quick Summary

Pratik Khowala, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard, walks through the three headline findings of Mastercard's Money in Motion report: nine in 10 SMEs plan to switch providers, trust and speed rank above cost in what SMEs actually value, and the bar for "good enough" keeps rising. He also names what surprised him most: how fast the pace of change has become.

What are the report's three headline findings?

First, nine out of 10 SMEs are planning to switch providers, and 92% are already using multiple providers at once. Second, when SMEs rank what matters most in cross-border money movement, trust and speed came out on top, at 35% and 34% respectively, ahead of transparency and cost at around 28% each, even though cost is what most people would intuitively expect to matter most. Third, trust, cost and transparency have become table stakes, so SMEs are now asking providers for more: a better experience, and more data services built around the payment itself.

What surprised Khowala most?

Asked what single thing stood out, Khowala points not to a number but to a pace: "how fluid the situation has become and how fast the world is moving." He says the rate of change in cross-border SME payments is significantly faster now than it was five years ago.

FF NEWS TAKE:

Ninety-two percent of SMEs already juggling multiple providers, with nine in 10 open to switching, is a market with almost no loyalty left to lose, which is exactly why Mastercard is pitching trust and speed, not price, as the way to win it. The real story may be Khowala's aside about pace: if the ground is shifting this fast, today's differentiators will be table stakes again within a year or two.