How AI-powered payment intelligence helps merchants and other payment initiators succeed with A2A payments

Merchants and other payment initiators are increasingly embracing account-to-account (A2A) payments as a cost-effective way to process online purchase and bill payments. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, A2A payments in the United States—electronic, bank-to-bank transfers via the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network—totaled $24.1 trillion.  

As advantageous as A2A payments can be, they do pose some challenges for merchants. For one thing, they can take up to two days to settle, so merchants may not know whether a customer lacks sufficient funds in their account until it’s too late. 

For example, a consumer buys a new outfit from their favorite online retailer using an A2A payment on a Monday.  However, by the time their payment settles on Wednesday, two large scheduled payments, such as a monthly mortgage and car payment, have depleted the account. For merchants, these failures can translate into lost revenue, higher return fees and frustrated customers. 

Insufficient funds (NSF) and unauthorized returns account for roughly 3% of all ACH transactions, and approaches 15% for some higher-risk merchants, such as those in the gaming industry, according to Mastercard data. 

At the same time, payment initiators face the challenge of fraud risk, as fraudsters today employ various methods to divert funds, including theft of customer credentials and chargeback fraud. To make matters worse, customers then have 60 days to dispute a payment, which makes it difficult to guarantee settlement and to predict cash flows accurately.  

The reality is that traditional payment risk tools were not designed for real‑time visibility into bank account behavior—leaving merchants effectively flying blind during the settlement window.

Open finance can mitigate these challenges, allowing merchants to use the payment options they prefer. Mastercard’s expanding A2A Payment Intelligence suite of services gives merchants a clearer view into whether a payment is likely to succeed—before it fails. Backed by proprietary AI-powered insights from Mastercard’s network, it cuts down on failed payments due to NSFs and unauthorized returns.  

And Mastercard’s advisory services can also help merchants learn from past successes and missteps, improving future results.

“As A2A adoption accelerates, understanding where risk comes from can make all the difference,” says Nicole Waibel, vice president of product for Mastercard’s Open Finance team. “We’ve harnessed the power of Mastercard data and artificial intelligence to produce real-time insights into settlement and fraud risk—helping our customers reduce losses and improve consumer experience. 

Mastercard’s expanded A2A Payment Intelligence suite of services begins with Payment Success Indicator (PSI), which predicts the likelihood that an A2A payment will clear successfully—before it’s initiated. Using real-time open finance data and insights derived from billions of signals across Mastercard’s network, PSI scores payments to identify the best time to process them within the next 10 days.

These PSI scores—from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest)—allow merchants to calibrate their risk assessment more accurately and act accordingly. Scores are based on various payment risk factors, including such things as recent balance history, recurring NSF and deposit history and known risky behaviors across the network. For higher-risk customers, merchants may decline payments; for others, they might spot a cash flow crunch on the horizon and suggest using another payment method, such as a debit card. 

Instead of reacting to failed payments after settlement, merchants can proactively reduce returns, lower fees and preserve customer relationships.

In parallel, Mastercard’s Payment Success Advisory service provides payment initiators with end-to-end consultative support to diagnose, strategize and optimize A2A payments, improving a range of performance metrics. That starts with an analysis of historical ACH returns, comparing any payment initiator client to others in its industry and offering best practices to improve performance and customer experience. 

The process of making improvements is ongoing: the platform iteratively learns and optimizes its processes, fine-tuning them to continuously improve outcomes for payment initiator clients. 

“Providing a transaction risk score assessment in real time at the moment of payment gives payment initiators foresight into A2A payment risk, and enables safer, more trustworthy account-to-account payments,” said Diana Di, director of product management for Mastercard’s open finance team.

Using Mastercard’s A2A Payment Intelligence service, merchants can see problems before they occur and solve them in advance. For merchants and customers, that’s a win-win. As A2A payments continue growing, Payment Intelligence helps merchants adopt them with greater confidence—turning risk into opportunity.