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Honors for Data Intelligence

Merchant onboarding, smarter lending

For merchants, onboarding should feel simple, secure, and grounded in trust. PayPal uses Mastercard Open Finance to streamline this experience, helping them verify their bank accounts and gain faster access to funds by reducing hold times. Mastercard also helps simplify bank account setup for consumers, while permissioned insights strengthen risk decisioning for PayPal Working Capital for small businesses and buy now, pay later (BNPL) options for consumers.

Demonstrating

how Mastercard Open Finance can be scaled globally

Reducing

friction in merchant onboarding and consumer bank account setup

Establishing

trusted standards for open banking adoption

Man on phone in front of HP laptop

Challenge

To expand its financial services offering, PayPal needed secure, scalable ways for merchants to connect and verify bank accounts, gain faster access to proceeds, and reduce friction at key conversion moments. It also sought to simplify the bank account setup experience for consumers.

 

At the same time, customer-permissioned financial data was critical to strengthening risk decisioning and expanding access to PayPal Working Capital for small businesses and BNPL lending for consumers. The challenge was to support growth while preserving the trust, security, consent, and risk controls customers expect.

Solution

PayPal led the way as the first client to deploy Mastercard’s Payment Enablement Bundle, bringing multiple Mastercard Open Finance capabilities into one streamlined experience.

 

For merchants, the bundle helps verify bank ownership, confirm balances, and establish trusted funding sources for ACH payments, reducing onboarding friction and hold times so they can access earned funds faster. Mastercard also helps simplify bank account setup for consumers. Permissioned insights support stronger risk analysis for PayPal Working Capital for SMBs and BNPL lending for consumers. while preserving consent and security. 

Woman on HP laptop at a coffee shop

Impact

PayPal showed that Open Finance can improve outcomes without compromising risk discipline. For merchants, a high-trust, low-friction onboarding journey makes it easier to connect and gain faster access to earned funds. Mastercard also helps simplify bank account setup for consumers. Since launch, the collaboration has connected millions of users with thousands of financial institutions.

12.5M+

users onboarded, linking 16.8M accounts

5,000+

financial institutions enabled

60%+

conversion rate

We saw an opportunity to simplify how customers connect their bank accounts and how merchants get started and access the funds they earn. Mastercard’s Payment Enablement Bundle helped us turn secure account connectivity into a scalable advantage. Permissioned insights also support smarter decision making for PayPal Working Capital and BNPL, expanding access to funding for businesses and consumers.

Ivan Szpakowski Senior Director, External Data & Open Banking PayPal

PayPal set out to make financial services easier to access through trusted, low-friction digital experiences. With Mastercard Open Finance, PayPal can streamline merchant onboarding, simplify bank account setup for consumers, and apply permissioned insights to lending decisions at scale.

What's next

With Mastercard Open Finance supporting merchant onboarding, consumer bank account setup, and lending decisioning for PayPal Working Capital and BNPL, PayPal has a powerful foundation for developing additional trusted, low-friction customer journeys. That creates an exciting path to scale the impact: helping merchants access earned funds faster, enabling consumers to connect bank accounts with less friction, and expanding access to tailored financing across products and geographies.

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