Mastercard

Mastercard is a global payment technology company operating one of the world's largest electronic payment networks, processing billions of transactions annually between cardholders, merchants, financial institutions, and governments. The Mastercard network enables secure debit and credit card payments at millions of acceptance locations worldwide including physical stores, online merchants, and mobile payment systems. Mastercard provides the infrastructure, security protocols, and authorization systems for processing transactions in real-time with fraud detection and chargeback protection. The company offers various card products including credit, debit, prepaid, and commercial cards with different benefits and reward structures tailored to consumer and business needs. Mastercard's technology includes tokenization, biometric authentication, contactless payment support (NFC), and encryption standards to secure payment data. For online merchants, Mastercard integration appears through payment gateways and checkout systems that accept Mastercard-branded cards with support for 3D Secure authentication. The company provides developer APIs and SDKs for implementing payment acceptance, card verification services, and value-added features like Mastercard Click to Pay. Mastercard competes with Visa, American Express, and Discover while processing transactions across nearly every country and supporting over 150 currencies. The network is fundamental infrastructure for global commerce and digital payments.