Forging closer ties with local partners while fully embracing emerging technologies is key to Mastercard's evolution from traditional card-centric businesses to a global money movement network, said Pratik Khowala, the company's executive vice-president and global head of transfer solutions.

Khowala made the remarks during an exclusive interview with China Daily in March, when Mastercard announced a new partnership between its global money movement business, Mastercard Move, and Bank of Shanghai.

This expansion signals a broader inflection point in how the company is positioning itself across one of the world's most dynamic cross-border corridors, said Khowala.

Enabling direct account-to-account payments, the new partnership helps companies realize faster and more predictable inbound settlement transactions via China's cross-border interbank payment system. On the other hand, Chinese SMEs can pay their suppliers in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa via Mastercard Move's global network. This largely reduces cash flow risks inherent in complicated international supply chain management, Khowala added.

The General Administration of Customs said China's total import and export value reached a record high 45.47 trillion yuan ($6.59 trillion) in 2025, up 3.8 percent from a year earlier. The export index of SMEs reached 52.4 percent in December, remaining at the expansionary territory for the 21st consecutive month, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Given this huge size, rapid turnover and stable cash flow are of utmost importance for Chinese companies as well as overseas SMEs along the supply chain, said Khowala, adding that the latest cooperation also aims at providing easier foreign currency exchange and remittance services for Chinese students studying abroad.

The New York-based Institute of International Education said there were over 900,000 Chinese students studying in popular overseas destinations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand in 2025.

Khowala said Mastercard's cross-border business in China has witnessed rapid growth over the past few years, and that momentum is expected to accelerate. Its new connectivity to China's bank account network through the partnership with Bank of Shanghai builds on its links to local payment giants such as Alipay and WeChat Pay for digital wallets and China UnionPay for cards.

Mastercard Move — which enables banks, nonbank financial institutions and payment providers to facilitate money transfers for people and businesses globally — delivered transaction growth exceeding 35 percent year-on-year in 2025. China has served as a critical frontier for this expansion, he said, adding that Mastercard Move's direct connections across key trade corridors like Europe and the US make it easier for Chinese companies to expand their outbound reach.

Addressing the country's "Shopping in China" initiative, the company has also worked with local partners to make the value-added-tax refund process easier and more digitalized for foreign visitors.

Despite the headwinds in the global supply chain due to escalated geopolitical tensions in some parts of the world, Mastercard continues to see strong demand for cross-border payments driven by robust foreign trade. Countries, including China, are thus making changes to their regulations so that small and medium-sized enterprises can ink deals more easily, with payments becoming less of an obstacle.

But there is still room for improvement, as cross-border payments are still slow, expensive and opaque in some scenarios, said Khowala.

Users need cross-border payment services to be "seamless", meaning that the payment experience should be similar within or beyond the borders. To make this a reality, Mastercard Move has been building direct connections with local partners and modalities across key corridors, removing intermediaries to enable cross-border payments that are fast, transparent and seamless, he said.