UK Bank Tide Inks Deal With Mastercard

U.K. small and medium-sized business (SMB)-focused bank Tide said it has a new relationship with Mastercard that makes Tide one of the card company’s principal issuers, Finextra reported Monday (July 20).

“Entering a strategic partnership with Mastercard and becoming a principal card issuer is an extremely exciting step for Tide,” Tide CEO Oliver Prill said in a prepared statement, according to the report. “We are looking forward to working closely with Mastercard to further develop the innovative service we offer to our members, and to push further forward in our mission to save small business owners time (and money) on their banking and administration.”

Under the multi-year arrangement, Tide will settle funds directly with Mastercard.

“This partnership is testament to the extreme growth Tide has experienced in the past few years,” Prill said. “With over 200,000 SME members now using the platform, Tide is rapidly increasing its market share and quickly catching up to the traditional players. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve in partnership with Mastercard.”

Scott Abrahams, senior vice president, business development and FinTech at Mastercard, said in the prepared statement cited by the news outlet: “Tide [is revolutionizing] business banking for SMEs and we are proud to have worked with them over the past five years since their inception. We are delighted to be expanding our relationship with Tide to continue to develop and offer their ground-breaking services to small business owners.”

Tide, which launched in 2016, has its headquarters is in London. The bank also has offices in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Hyderabad, India.

In October 2019 the company raised $54 million.

In April of this year, Tide launched what it called an “invoice protection program” through which small and medium-sized businesses can protect their cash flow from unpaid invoices or late payments.

According to Tide research, late payments represented a total of 50 billion pounds ($62.3 billion) for U.K. SMBs in 2019. Those businesses spent an average of 1.5 hours per day attempting to get paid.