This Company Partnered with Mastercard to Help NYC In Its Efforts to Fight the Spread of COVID

Founded in 1966, Mastercard Inc. MA, has long been a leading global player in the financial market. Today, with the advent of fintech, Mastercard is increasingly using its payments network to solve emerging modern problems. 

Examples of how the company’s solutions are using technology to solve emerging problems can be seen through what it refers to as its Next Gen Solutions. Through these solutions, the financial giant seeks to create real impact on improving the efficiency of financial solutions through new technology.

Mastercard's Next Gen Solutions offer multiple examples of various collaborations it has made in the fintech space, including with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., WBA, Synchrony Financial SYF, among others. The marketing campaign for these next-gen solutions highlights particularly impactful programs it has sponsored.

Featured among these is Texas-based Usio Inc. USIO. Usio is a cloud-based fintech payment processing company that offers robust prepaid card issuing and program management platforms.

The Usio Advantage - Helping NYC Recover From The Pandemic

Among the programs that have emerged through Mastercard’s City KeyTM initiative, this program works with city and local agencies, providing them with a payment platform to address their needs for fund disbursement to residents and local businesses. 

For instance, the New York City Economic Development Council was able to incentivize NYC residents who got COVID-19 immunizations with $100 issued on a prepaid Mastercard.

As part of the broader initiative, Usio collaborated with Mastercard to distribute prepaid cards issued by the New York City Economic Development Corp. This was part of a New York City COVID-19 campaign geared toward helping boost recovery as the city emerged from the pandemic.

Through its collaboration with Mastercard, Usio has issued cards in more than 200 municipalities, nonprofits and small to medium-sized businesses in the past year, seeing over $180 million loaded onto its prepaid cards. The COVID-related initiative has also helped distribute over $90 million in $100 cash rewards to over 900,000 New Yorkers, thus accelerating the rate of vaccination while also helping business owners economically recover.

“We are proud to work with innovative partners like Usio to drive next-generation solutions that improve lives and make a lasting impact,” said Jody Barnett, Mastercard’s head of Global Cities, Mobility and Transit. For Usio, this recognition of their work is quite welcome.

Working both as a program manager and issuer processor, Usio provides fund disbursement, transaction processing, compliance and detailed reporting on how funds are spent. Usio’s proprietary card issuing platform, Akimbo, is the interface that includes remote reloading for the cards and merchant category code restrictions to manage how the funds are spent. 

Prepaid cards for Usio saw a 107% increase in revenue from 2020 to 2021, and the company continues to work with a variety of municipalities and businesses to meet their fund disbursement and management needs. It maintains its strong partnership with Mastercard, as it continues actively collaborating in Mastercard’s City Possible program.

“Mastercard has been a valuable partner of Usio for several years, and we are very flattered that it has chosen this program from the many it has sponsored as a feature in its new marketing campaign. We look forward to continuing to build this mutually beneficial relationship,” Usio CEO Louis Hoch said. 

Usio is a leading cloud-based fintech company that offers a variety of electronic payment solutions for businesses, banks, lenders and more. Its products include automated clearing house (ACH) services, prepaid cards, payment facilitation and billing services.

To learn more about Usio, visit its website.  

To learn more about the Mastercard City Key program, click here. 

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. 

Featured photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash