Finicity is part of the Mastercard family. Our open banking platform provides the financial data you need.

In the evolving world of open banking, it’s easy for businesses to get lost in the endless possibilities. Who do we partner with to provide services at scale? How do we make it easier and faster for our fintech, merchant and lender partners to use our services? What is the most effective way to deploy the power of open banking? Mastercard today announced an expansion of its Engage partner network to help businesses decide who they can count on for technology integration of open banking services. We connect platform providers and ecosystem partners and help them provide open banking services at scale, making it easier and faster for fintech, merchant and lender clients to utilize consumer-permissioned data to offer new and improved financial services.

The Engage network offers businesses easy access to financial technology partners that can quickly build and deploy open banking services for payments and lending decisioning use cases at scale. The initial partners to join Mastercard Engage for open banking include Dwolla, FinTech Automation, i2c, Link Financial Technologies, LoanPro, Nova Credit, Provenir, Synctera, Tern and Usio, Inc.

Through this new program, these providers benefit from fewer contracts, faster access to customers, data security and access and overall flexibility to better leverage Mastercard’s robust open banking services.  

Mastercard has a long-standing track record of working with technology and fintech partners to build the future of financial services and enable more choices for consumers. With three billion cardholders and 93 million merchants, the more partners Mastercard has, the more powerful the flywheel of our network becomes. Since 2018, nearly 150 partners around the world have joined the Mastercard Engage program. In the last year alone, nearly 100 Engage partners have helped their customers deploy new, innovative solutions on more than 250 million accounts with Mastercard digital services, including all-digital consumer payments experiences, tokenization, digital wallet, mobile POS solutions and now, open banking. 

Implementation Choices to Fit Your Needs

Open banking through Mastercard and its technology partners allows businesses to establish direct consumer-permissioned connections with their customers’ bank accounts. Through these consumer-permissioned connections, businesses can verify accounts for payments and payouts, check balances to reduce payment failures, and cut fraud by confirming bank account ownership. This has improved the payment experience for both the businesses and their customers.

Similarly for lending, borrowers can directly permission data and insights through the ecosystem to support their lending decisioning processes. This also means a better lending experience for both the lender and borrower, as it provides financial insights, expanded data sets not available through paper submissions, increased financial inclusion, and a simplified experience. 

The Engage program provides two implementation options for open banking technology integration partners. The first two offerings are Partner Linked and Partner Direct. These methods provide a seamless and secure implementation of consumer-permissioned data through Mastercard’s open banking platform and can be used together or separately, depending on the preference of the financial technology provider.

Partner Linked provides broad ecosystem access, allowing business clients to quickly begin using the solutions through their preferred platform partner. This integration is an agreement with a partner and a direct agreement with the business. Engage partners can integrate to Finicity, Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary with a customer-supplied access key, shielding their businesses from needing to handle user credentials. This method provides simple integration for our partners and the business contracts directly with Finicity.

Partner Direct is a reseller agreement that allows for greater customization than the Partner Linked integration, and direct access to provide business clients with a single integration for all open banking data, lending and/or payment services. Partners can directly embed and/or resell Mastercard open banking services and offer a customized experience for their business customers, wrapping additional value-added services around Mastercard’s open banking platform.

As an Engage technology partner, you can expect:   

Some Mastercard open banking services are delivered through Mastercard’s wholly -owned subsidiary, Finicity Corporation. Open banking services through the Engage program are launching with U.S. partners today with plans to expand globally.

Visit the Mastercard Engage website for more information, or schedule a meeting with one of our integration experts to learn more.

Certain open banking solutions are provided by Finicity, a Mastercard company.

Revised July 1, 2022

This week, Freddie Mac announced the latest Loan Product Advisor® (LPASM) enhancement that includes on-time rent payments as part of the company’s purchase determinations.

Mastercard, a designated third-party service provider for Freddie Mac, is excited to provide two reports for lenders that include rent payment history.

Our Mortgage Verification Services (MVS) product provides the consumer-permissioned data necessary for LPA’s rent payment history credit assessment with no setup required for the lender. If you’re already using an MVS asset report, you will automatically send the data necessary for a rent assessment.

Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity), is a designated service provider that offers a digital, single-vendor solution for assets, income and employment through both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. By automating the asset and income assessment process, we can also provide transaction data for rent payment history, direct deposits and 10-day pre-closing reports for employment verification. These solutions help to streamline lenders’ loan approval process and increase homeownership opportunities to qualified borrowers.

Rent Payment History in Lender Credit Decisioning

By virtue of sheer numbers, millennials are defining the trends of today’s housing market. The age group now accounts for 43% of all homebuyers so far in 2022, according to a new report by the National Association of Realtors. With approximately one-third of this demographic being credit invisible, there’s an opportunity to incorporate additional data sources to help establish creditworthiness and the ability to repay the loan. The integration of rent payment history into the mortgage lending process can be helpful to first-time homebuyers who have a strong track record of on-time rent payments, creating a new path to homeownership while still promoting safe lending.

In addition to this week’s announcement from Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae has included rent payments in their automated mortgage credit decisioning process in Desktop Underwriter® (DU®) since September 18, 2021. Fannie Mae identified recurring rent payments in bank statements and transaction data as a factor which could deliver a more inclusive credit assessment.

Fannie Mae said 17% of applicants who have not owned a home in the last three years and who did not receive a favorable mortgage recommendation could have instead received an “approved” or “eligible” recommendation if their rental payment history had been considered. 

To take advantage of the rent payment history feature, Mastercard provides a Verification of Asset and Income (VOAI) and a Verification of Assets (VOA) report through its Mortgage Verification Service (MVS) that includes 12 or 24 months of transaction data that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae can use to identify rent payment history that may provide a more favorable credit assessment.

If they are using the VOA report, lenders have the freedom to access either two or 12 months of data to satisfy their own underwriting requirements. The reports can be called with a direct API or are available currently in ICE Encompass and Encompass Consumer Connect, as well as the SimpleNexus mortgage point-of-sale (POS) platform. 

Integrated with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Systems

Mastercard is a service provider for Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting system, LPA, which automates the assessment of borrower assets, income and employment using LPA asset and income modeler (AIM). By leveraging the expertise of service providers, AIM helps to deliver a simpler, more efficient loan origination process.

Fannie Mae’s DU validation service also accepts our mortgage verification services to independently validate borrower assets, income, and employment data—providing Day 1 Certainty® on validated loan components. By digitally validating secure third-party data through DU, you can help eliminate the paper chase and help get your borrowers approved quicker.

Learn more about Mortgage Verification Services here or request a demo from one of our open banking experts.

Open banking is a big deal.

That means that Mastercard’s platform (which includes services from Mastercard’s wholly owned subsidiary, Finicity Corporation) is a combination of the work of many different disciplines like engineering, financial expertise, security and more. At the center of it all are product analysts like Kayla Kent, who began at Mastercard in December 2021, after moving to Utah from Northern Virginia.

What’re your responsibilities?

I’m on the consumer experience team, and we support the development of Mastercard’s open banking products. As a product analyst, I’m kind of the middleman between our development team, our design team, marketing, legal, etc, making sure basically that we’re on track and aligned with our product roadmap. I help support the team through the software development lifecycle with an agile project methodology.

What kinds of challenges do you solve?

When we’re going through our backlogs and getting work ready for our development team, there’s a bit of planning that goes into that, so a project management hat goes on. And then we’re working with our design team and reviewing product designs and features that are going in, so I’m putting on more of a creative hat. When we’re doing competitive analysis and seeing how we can be better, I’m wearing an analytical hat.

How does your team exemplify Mastercard values like urgency?

Our team just gets the work done. If there’s something blocking us, we’ll escalate it immediately. We help each other out by seeing if there are ways to fix any issues that are keeping the project from progressing, making sure we’re pulling in the right people to address those problems and things like that.

What’s the culture like on your team?

We have a lot of team bonding social events. So we’ll do a lot of lunches together; we do a bi-weekly team social where we’ll play games and stuff, which is super nice. Because it’s not just like it’s all work between your colleagues. You’re kind of building a relationship past that and having that cohesive team feeling.

I think what’s really cool is that, like, on Slack, there’s all these various team channels, and there’s one that’s called “#misc_womenatfinicity” where we’ll share upcoming volunteering events or career development events that are going on. Another cool resource is Unlocked, which is a resource where you can build your profile and find other volunteering opportunities if you want to develop certain skill sets, or even find a mentor.

What does working at Mastercard enable you to do in your spare time?

There’s a good work-life balance at a Mastercard company, and my fiance and I wanted to live in the Salt Lake City area because of all the outdoor activities the area has to offer. So in my free time, we do a lot of skiing, hiking, camping and exploring the national and state parks down in southern Utah, which has been super fun.

It’s a bit of a slower-paced lifestyle here, which I like because you get a chance to breathe, whereas in Washington, or really in any urban area, you get really wrapped up in your work, you’re pulling a lot of overtime and you’re kind of consumed in that.

Why should someone consider joining the Mastercard open banking team?

I was interested in working in fintech because you get more opportunity to truly innovate, which you don’t get at every workplace. Another thing is that Mastercard has subsidiaries and offices everywhere, so you’re working with people in places like Europe or in India, and you get that different perspective or background from them. The four weeks of work-from-anywhere time is also really nice—since my family and a lot of my friends are based on the East Coast, it’s nice to be able to take advantage of that.

Interested in joining our team?

We’re growing! Search for and apply to our open positions here.

Also, stay informed about news, events, and opportunities at Mastercard by joining our talent community.

Small-to-midsize business (SMB) owners have had to pivot and adjust to the new realities of the economy, throughout the pandemic and beyond. Implementing new business models, investing in PPE and managing employees all come with additional costs, in a business environment that’s already rife with inflationary pressures. 

Managing these challenges takes every available resource, and owner-permissioned SMB open banking data is powering the financial management apps and services that owners are embracing to improve their business operations. According to Mastercard’s Rise of Open Banking Small Business report, connecting accounts is the main driver that provides the insights and analytics that owners are looking for to help tackle critical business tasks. Ninety-six percent of owners are currently linking their business financial accounts, taking advantage of fintech apps and services that leverage open banking data to generate crucial information and insights for their businesses, helping to improve decision-making. The top reasons for connecting accounts are: 

With all the benefits of linking accounts, fintech innovators have a window of opportunity in the SMB space to improve the connection process:  

Even with the understandable adjustments that it takes to press forward into a new era of digital business and financial management, the desire to adopt is strong in the SMB sector. Owners want to digitize their businesses to help prevent fraud, automate processes and share data and insights across apps. 

Linking Accounts Generates Real-Time Financial Insights

Despite rising fintech use, 94% of small business owners still encounter financial pain points. Many of them cite financial management as a major source of stress.

Owners are seeking solutions that can help them with financial management to address these pain points. They’re looking for better ways to harness their business’s data to get a holistic view, optimize financial management and inform business strategy. 

This is where SMB fintech services providers can step in and provide solutions, partnering with SMBs as they push forward into the new digital economy. Owners are open to receiving help. Sixty-three percent are looking for help with financial planning for their business, and 85% want the kind of custom financial recommendations that come from linking accounts and sharing open banking data. 

The top driver for owners linking accounts is improvement in business decision-making. This comes directly from financial management apps and services. Real-time data paired with AI, machine learning and analytics can have a powerful impact on an owner’s speed of decision-making and action, allowing them to either take advantage of opportunities or avoid costly mistakes. 

Better data and better decisions naturally feed into the rest of the top-three SMB owners’ concerns: saving time and improving financial health. 

How Small Businesses are Using Open Banking Fintech Apps and Services

According to Mastercard’s report, banking is the top use case for small businesses, once they link their accounts. Depositing checks, paying bills and transferring funds are core, everyday needs that SMB owners are currently using fintech to accomplish. 

Billing and invoicing can be streamlined and automated with fintech, and small businesses want this. Sixty-one percent of small businesses are already using fintech to do so. When routine tasks can be handled in the background by apps, owners can move more pressing concerns to the forefront. Growing, scaling and developing products or services can be given the bandwidth they deserve.

Sixty percent are using digital apps and services for cash flow management. With real-time data from linked accounts, owners can pay bills strategically, while making sure they can pay vendors, employees and themselves. 

While the number of SMBs leveraging fintech apps is currently in the 50-60% range, the Rise of Open Banking study found that the number who want to use digital apps and services powered by open banking is over 90% for the majority of use cases. 

The 31.7 million small businesses in the US are looking for more choice in financial services. They’re willing and ready to adapt to the digital future, and are looking for innovators that provide solutions to help them make better decisions.

Mastercard’s “always on” platform means maximum connection uptime and the highest quality data for insights into the financial health of a small business. Read the full report here to see details on the solutions small businesses are looking for from financial service technology.

*Some open banking services are provided by Mastercard’s wholly owned subsidiary, Finicity Corporation.

Mastercard has launched the Start Path Open Banking global program to engage open banking startups on their path to scale, uncover unique opportunities to co-innovate and power experiences that enable consumer choice. The companies handpicked for this inaugural class – Dapi, Finantier, mmob, Mono and Paywallet – demonstrate strong synergies with Mastercard’s tech-driven approach and are committed to putting consumers and small businesses at the center of where and how their financial data is used to further access services they want and need.

During the three-month program, startups will have an opportunity to leverage Mastercard’s open banking expertise and market insights and learn more about the company’s open banking platforms through wholly-owned subsidiaries Finicity and Aiia.

Read more here about how these five startups are accessing resources, expertise and tools to grow through Mastercard Start Path.

According to a recent study from Mastercard, consumers say obtaining a mortgage is a serious pain point in an already painful homebuying process. The survey shows that 89% of homebuyers find the mortgage process to be equally or more stressful than the homebuying experience. 

Borrowers whose lenders used digital mortgage verifications were less likely to say the loan process was the most stressful part of buying or refinancing a home, and 83% of respondents using digital verifications said their loan processing time was shorter than expected or met their expectations. 

As a designated third-party service provider of Freddie Mac, Finicity, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mastercard, offers an integration of its open banking data and Mortgage Verification Services (MVS) with AIM that allows clients to automate the capacity assessment using consumer-permissioned data, direct deposit account data and work history. In the case of income, lenders can now look at direct deposit history to verify income. 

Click here to read the MReport article by Andy Sheehan, EVP Open Banking about how Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity) is moving the mortgage process into the digital future.

Offering fast, secure payment choices to consumers is absolutely essential to the success of any small-to-mid-sized business (SMB). The digitization of every business, large or small, has been underway for decades, but recent studies show that the pandemic accelerated that process by five years. 

Consumers are looking for fast, convenient, contactless ways to shop and pay bills, driving businesses to adopt open banking-powered card and non-card technologies and platforms to service them. 

Payments are the Entry Point to Open Banking for Small Businesses

Nearly nine in 10 business owners utilize digital payments and open banking-backed payments, speeding up cash flow. Owners are also leaning into open banking to verify, secure and personalize payment transactions. 

SMBs are projected to spend more than $100 billion on payment services by 2025. It’s no surprise that payments are the open banking entry point for small businesses, according to Mastercard’s Rise of Open Banking small business report. 

As emerging payment methods like cryptocurrency and digital wallets gain widespread adoption, SMBs rely on open banking to create streamlined customer journeys. 

Ninety percent of SMBs utilize services that link accounts, enabling the speed, convenience and confidence of open banking payments. Owners cite a few core payment-related benefits for linking accounts:

Small Businesses are Quickly Migrating to Digital

The pandemic-driven fast-forwarding of digital adoption by SMBs has raised owners’ financial IQ, as 95% consider themselves heavy fintech users. The top driver for fintech use is the desire to make their businesses more digital. Permissioned data and the payment innovations it enables are primary needs for the SMB, as 92% are currently using or want to use digital payment systems. With a 50.5% increase in online sales from 2019 to 2020, the trend toward digital is evident, and businesses are embracing open banking to stay ahead of the curve.

SMBs are looking for solutions for agility and resilience, powered by technology. They’re facing challenges that are mostly digital, and they’re looking for digital solutions. Owner-permissioned data, insights and analytics from open banking platforms is creating new payment experiences for SMBs to offer consumers. To the SMB owner, open banking is an opportunity to partner with an innovator and grow. 

Accelerating adoption of digital channels means that a small business needs a partner that can handle real-time bank account verification, account data snapshots and predictive analytics. These core services can mitigate payment failures and fees, enable onboarding, maintain compliance and power next-gen payment apps and services.

Mastercard’s complementary account-based payments business leverages best-in-class capabilities across infrastructure, applications and services. By converging capabilities, Mastercard provides one trusted platform that empowers businesses to pay and get paid with confidence, using a card, bank account, or cryptocurrency. SMB owners can use a device or no device, and send or receive payments in real time or later. This kind of empowerment is what today’s innovators can offer the SMB, by leveraging open banking solutions. Maximum choice in payment types and methods, powered by open banking, providing effective tools for small business. 

Open Banking Payment Innovations are Gaining Momentum

Account-based payments are an emerging area ripe for targeted fintech development. Open banking technology allows you to integrate consumer-permissioned technology to your fintech innovation that offers more ways to pay with greater speed, convenience and confidence. With better quality data and insights about the small business, the non-card payments journey can be smoother.

Account-based payments are a new way for consumers to pay small businesses with convenience, security and control. Instead of entering payment card information, the customer can view their bank and the account they want to use, authenticate themselves, and pay immediately. Customers can: 

Mastercard is delivering the platform for innovation in the payments sector, giving fintechs the ability to scale up confidently. The recent release of Mastercard’s Smart Payment Decisioning Tools uses real-time bank data permissioned by a consumer to show payment indicators that can raise successful payment completion rates and reduce transaction costs. With Payment Success Indicator, payment failure risk can be mitigated by scoring the likelihood of a success before initiating it. Then with Payment Routing Optimizer, payment originators are given a recommendation for the most optimal day and rail to choose for the highest likelihood of successful settlement at the best cost and speed. These next-gen tools can give the SMB the advantage they need to best compete in a growing digital economy. 

In the next installment of the Rise of Open Banking series, we look at how open banking is driving innovation in SMB Financial Management. Click here to download the full study.

The United States is home to 32.5 million small businesses, which amounts to 99.9% of all businesses in the country. They employ just under half of the workforce, and are responsible for 44% of total GDP. Clearly, supporting the growth of small-to-midsize businesses is essential to the lifeblood of the economy. 

The important role of the small business in the economy isn’t always reflected by lending guidelines that work for the small business owner, however. Thirty percent of businesses that apply for credit through traditional lenders are denied, or only qualify for a portion of the funds they need. These numbers drop even further for minorities looking for the operating capital they need to grow their businesses. 

In an increasingly data-driven, digital economy, there’s room for additional choice. Innovative lending solutions can give every owner an equal opportunity to make their business dreams a reality. 

Open Banking is Giving Lenders and Small Business Owners More Choice

According to Mastercard’s Rise of Open Banking study, 74% of small-to-midsize business (SMB) owners would share business performance data if it meant that they could better demonstrate their ability to pay back a loan and have more choice in lending options. Black, hispanic and millennial owners are even more enthusiastic about sharing financial data, if sharing it means being presented with better loan terms and options. Over 80% responded positively to data sharing in each of those demographic categories. 

Owner-permissioned data through Mastercard’s open banking platform can power apps and services with up to 24 months of rich cash flow attributes. This can inform better, more accurate insights which lenders can use to make financial decisions. Approvals, credit increases, leases and other small business needs can be granted with reduced risk of bad debt. 

Data can be used to develop new lending models and underwrite new lending products. This opens up access to capital with terms and options that can be crafted to fit unique SMB needs. Funding is an ongoing issue for small business owners. Eighty-five percent are looking for faster, easier access to capital, and 62% have received a business loan. 

Whether it comes from public-facing consumer retail, ecommerce, professional services or seasonal businesses, owner-permissioned open banking data is the launchpad for a fast-growing ecosystem of effective financial tools that simply didn’t exist in the pre-digital era. 

Rather than basing lending decisions on metrics like personal credit scores, business credit scores and time in business, lenders are using open banking data points and analytics to unlock capital. Businesses that may have been impeded by traditional guidelines that aren’t aligned with the modern economy now have new options for funding. They’re benefiting from advances in open banking data technology, and they’re asking for the financial opportunities and insights that data can provide.

Small Business Owners Want to Grow With Tools and Allies

Despite the challenges of rising costs, talent acquisition, supply chain issues, cybersecurity and a host of other concerns, owners are optimistic and ready to grow. Forty-seven percent say they’re in growth mode, and looking for allies to help them scale up. 

Over 80% of owners say they want a partner to help them find access to capital and to loans that fit the needs of their specific business. This is where open banking solutions stand out, and where innovators are expanding the lending ecosystem with data-driven loan products, like:

In just a three-month period at the beginning of 2020, U.S.-based fintech Lendio helped over 100,000 small businesses connect to over $8 billion in U.S. Paycheck Protection Program loans, using owner-permissioned open banking data to analyze cash flow and other alternative lending metrics.

Small business specialists like Lendio have been a badly-needed lifeline during the pandemic and beyond. An open banking platform makes it possible to close the smaller loans that financial institutions don’t typically originate, and to do it more quickly. The manpower needed to run open banking-powered apps and services is less intensive than what is required to handle the traditional underwriting process at larger institutions. The amount of work that it takes to underwrite smaller loans has made them less appealing to some lenders in the past. 

This has caused some business owners to be left behind, particularly women and minorities seeking less capital to fund their enterprises. 

Open banking provides real-time data that helps lenders understand a small to mid-sized business’ creditworthiness, letting them more quickly and easily approve loans, no matter the size. With small business loans ranging from $5,000 to $1.2 million, it’s clear there is a wide range of opportunities to ally with owners by offering specialized lending products. 

Addressing a Growing Need in the Small Business Sector

There’s a growing list of lenders covering every need and every niche that the market is asking for, and demand has never been higher. According to the Mastercard study, eighty-seven percent of owners already use or would like to use open banking-powered fintech apps and services to secure funding for their businesses. 

Small businesses are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic, with the percentage of cash-strapped enterprises moving up slightly, from 15% to 18%. Innovators have an opportunity to create solutions that help owners who need reserves and operating capital, but who may have a short tenure in business, a thin credit file or low FICO scores. 

Owners want to secure and refinance loans. They want allies to help them make informed decisions. Ninety-six percent of them are linking their accounts and sharing their data. Alongside the desire for funding, 85% are looking for the customized financial recommendations that can come from sharing data with open banking apps and services. They want access to capital, and they want it quicker and smarter, to keep pace with an unpredictable consumer marketplace. 

In the next installment of the Rise of Open Banking series, we look at how open banking is transforming the payments experience for the SMB. Click here to download the full study.

Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity) offers pre-close reports that provide just the right data that GSEs need for 10-day verification of employment. Today, Freddie Mac announced the acceptance of our Verification of Employment (VOE) Reports. 

In adding the VOE Payroll and Transactions reports to our Mortgage Verification Services (MVS) product, we have enabled lenders to receive only the data GSEs require for the 10-day verification. Lenders can use these reports to view only your borrower’s employment status, rather than refreshing the full reports that contain more data than required for an employment verification. This minimizes the introduction of new income data or other redundant and unnecessary underwriting changes that could delay the loan closing or cause additional work.

The two available reports provide different types of information. The VOE Transactions report contains 120 days of refreshed transactions with dates and description, but no amounts or totals so income is not reassessed. It shows the latest direct deposits in the income streams, to confirm the  borrower is still being paid on their regular cadence.

Another option is the VOE Payroll report. This contains only employment status and details—no income or other data—so lenders can see that the individual is still employed according to their payroll provider.

These two reports are part of MVS at no extra charge and are currently available for lenders connecting directly to Mastercard and through Ice Mortgage Technology.

The VOE Transaction and Payroll reports can help lenders improve accuracy and simplify the process of verifying employment within ten days of closing, removing more friction from the loan origination process without increasing risk. With one click, a GSE-accepted VOE report is available in moments, avoiding the lost time and the uncertainty of tracking down verbal verifications from employers.

How can you access these 10-day pre-closing reports?

To pull the VOE reports today, your team will need to code directly to the endpoints or add this functionality through Encompass LOS from Ice Technology. You can find documentation here. To see Mastercard’s Mortgage Verification Services in action, request a demo here.

Want to learn what borrowers want from a digitized mortgage process powered by open banking solutions? Click here.

Welcome to the first installment of We Are Mastercard, a series of blog posts highlighting the fintech innovators behind our platform. Mastercard’s open banking solutions are powered by thousands of connections to financial institutions, layers upon layers of security and groundbreaking artificial intelligence-driven analytics.

However, what truly sets our technology apart is the people who create it, like Rachel Burnett. She’s a software engineer at Finicity, a Mastercard company, and a 2020 graduate of the University of Utah.

What’s your position at Finicity? And what are your responsibilities?

I’m a software engineer on the Connect services team. We support Finicity Connect, an application that allows users to connect to their bank and pull their financial data.

My team manages a service that maintains and serves financial institution data. Everything from the physical location of the institution to the routing number, branding files and a lot more. We store that information and then serve that up to Connect.

One of the major challenges is how to make the users’ flow in Connect as efficient and successful as possible. Another challenge is market expansion, looking at how we’re moving our products and services into different countries.

How does Finicity give you the resources to solve those problems?

Teddy frequently reviews Rachel’s code while she’s working from home.

As an early career software engineer, I have a passion for technology and am always looking to learn and grow as much as possible by reading about new technologies or practicing coding languages I might not use regularly.

Every other Friday afternoon, we have “innovation time,” where we have the freedom to research or play around with side projects to grow and practice our skills as software engineers. It’s awesome that we can have that freedom and flexibility to work on those skills and learn more. I feel like I’ve grown a lot since I’ve been here.

What’s the culture like on your team?

I have really great teammates who have a lot more experience than me. They’re incredibly knowledgeable. And they’ve been incredibly patient and generous in sharing their expertise and helping me with problems along the way. They are such a valuable resource. Just being able to Slack them questions or ask them to pair-program with me has been incredibly helpful.

On our team, you’re not expected to have everything perfect the first time. Teammates offer to do code reviews, help you test across environments, and genuinely want you to succeed because that’s what will make the team succeed.

How does your team exemplify Mastercard values?

Ownership is really important and something that our team really values—making sure that our code is thoroughly tested and that we hold each other accountable with code reviews as a team, together. We make sure that we ask the right questions to verify that there aren’t any gaps and that we’ve thought about the different use cases and scenarios.

Even if something seems trivial, we take accountability so that we can see it all the way through to how it might affect the end user.

What does working at Finicity enable you to do in your spare time?

One of Rachel’s hobbies is hiking with Hazel on mountain trails just minutes away from Mastercard’s offices in Murray, Utah.

My dog loves hiking, so that’s always fun. Just spending time with friends and family, camping, that kind of stuff.

We have a good work-life balance for sure. If we ever need to take time off to recharge or go see family outside of Utah or anything like that, we’re definitely supported and encouraged to do so.

Why should someone consider joining the Mastercard open banking team?

I think it’s really exciting to be working in an industry that is so important. I mean, it’s awesome to see the impact of the work you do because banking has a place in all of our lives. That’s exciting.

Also, Mastercard has awesome values and we have great benefits. We have 5 paid volunteer days per year, “work from anywhere” days and the Mastercard Cares program. It’s a great company that really cares about the employee and the individual. You know, they want to see us succeed and be happy. And then, on top of that, I think it’s fun and engaging work.

Interested in joining our team?

We’re growing! Search for and apply to our open positions here. Also, stay informed about news, events, and opportunities at Mastercard by joining our talent community.