Start Path Small Business
Start Path Small Business is a Mastercard program that helps startups and small businesses integrate Mastercard's developer APIs to build and scale payment, security, open finance, and digital commerce solutions.
- Company typePublic
- Founded1966
- HeadquartersPurchase, United States
- Headcount—
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Start Path Small Business does
Start Path Small Business is a Mastercard program, founded in 2014 and operated from Purchase, New York, that engages startups and small businesses to build and scale solutions on top of Mastercard's developer platform. The program provides participants access to Mastercard Developers, a self-service portal exposing 89 API products spanning payments (Installments, BIN Lookup, Transaction Alerts), security (MDES tokenization, Automatic Billing Updater, Account Validation, Threat Protection), open finance (covering an estimated 95% of US deposit accounts and roughly 3,000 European banks), identity, loyalty, and digital commerce. Participants integrate through REST APIs secured with OAuth 1.0a, OAuth 2.0 (FAPI 2.0 profile), and mTLS certificates, with sandbox and production environments plus SDKs in Java, Node, Python, C#, and PHP supporting development lifecycles.
The underlying platform architecture combines a developer portal (user onboarding, project management, API console, Project History, generative search), an AI and tooling layer (AI-Powered API Quality Assessment on Databricks, Agent Toolkit with Model Context Protocol, Generative Engine Optimization, personalization engine, and real-time anomaly detection), and an ecosystem layer anchored by the Mastercard Engage partner network and Fintech Express program. Reported integrations span insurance (Allstate), global payments (Adyen), travel settlement (Accelya), banking (First Abu Dhabi Bank SlicePay, SoFi), and other regulated industries, indicating that the platform is used both for direct API consumption and for embedding Mastercard rails inside partner products.
Monetization flows through Mastercard's broader transaction-fee, scheme-fee, and commercial-licensing model rather than as a separately invoiced Start Path Small Business line item. The program's economic function is therefore primarily as a startup and SMB acquisition channel that feeds adoption, partnership formation, and downstream transaction volume into Mastercard's core payments network, with the developer portal and ecosystem programs operating as the go-to-market surface.
Start Path Small Business firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Start Path Small Business
- Legal name
- Mastercard
- Website
- https://developer.mastercard.com
- Company type
- Public
- Founded year
- 1966
- Operating status
- Operating
- Short description
- Start Path Small Business is a Mastercard program that helps startups and small businesses integrate Mastercard's developer APIs to build and scale payment, security, open finance, and digital commerce solutions.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Start Path Small Business industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Payment API Platform
- NAICS
- Credit Card Issuing (52221)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Small Business Banking (Microbusiness/Sole Proprietor) (FSABAAAI)
Keywords
Where Start Path Small Business is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Purchase
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
Start Path Small Business business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations
Revenue model
- API Access and Licensing: Mastercard APIs are offered to developers and enterprises through project-based access. Financial institutions, fintechs, merchants, and other partners integrate Mastercard APIs and pay based on usage, transaction volumes, and commercial agreements.
- Payment Network Services: Transaction processing, authorization, clearance, and settlement services across the Mastercard payment network generate fees based on transaction volume.
- Installment Program Fees: Issuers and lenders benefit from enhanced economics with installment program fees through the Mastercard Installments credential program.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Sandbox (Free) |
| Subscription | Multi-year contract | Production Access |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels7 records
Start Path Small Business product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Start Path Small Business is a Mastercard program that enables startups and small businesses to collaborate with Mastercard, scale payment and commerce solutions, and integrate with Mastercard's suite of 89+ APIs covering payments, security, open finance, fraud prevention, and loyalty. Program participants gain access to Mastercard's global payment network, developer tools, sandbox environments, and Mastercard Engage partner ecosystem to build and commercialize small business solutions.
Product overview
Mastercard Developers is a comprehensive API platform with 89 products organized across categories including Payments (52 products), Data (27 products), Security (16 products), Loyalty (15 products), Open Finance (4 products), and Featured offerings (43 products). The platform provides a unified developer experience with OAuth 1.0a and OAuth 2.0 authentication, sandbox environments, and AI-powered tooling including the Agent Toolkit with Model Context Protocol. Core products include Open Finance for financial data access, MDES for tokenization, Transaction Notifications for real-time purchase data, Installments for BNPL solutions, ABU for account updating, and Offers for Publishers for card-linked loyalty programs. Additional offerings span payment processing, fraud prevention, identity verification, cross-border payments, and merchant acceptance solutions.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Mastercard Developers: The official API developer portal for Mastercard Corporation, providing access to over 89 API products for payments, security, data services, loyalty, and open finance.
- Mastercard Offers for Publishers
- Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES)
- Automatic Billing Updater (ABU)
- Mastercard Installments
- Mastercard Bill Pay
- BIN Lookup
- Open Finance
Products and services
- Open Finance APIs Suite of APIs enabling access to consumer financial data including account ownership, balances, transactions, investments, and payments. Available in the US (covering 95% of deposit accounts), Australia, and Europe (~3,000 banks). Designed for startups and fintechs building account opening, lending, personal financial management, and small business financial management products.
- MDES (Mastercard Digital Enablement Service) Tokenization platform enabling digitization of Mastercard card numbers for digital wallets, e-commerce, and in-app transactions. Provides token lifecycle management, customer service APIs, and authentication facilitation for issuers, wallet providers, and merchants.
- Automatic Billing Updater (ABU) Service providing updated payment account credentials (card numbers and expiration dates) to reduce card-not-present transaction declines. Supports push subscription and pull inquiry models for card-on-file merchants.
- Mastercard Installments Suite of APIs enabling financial institutions, fintechs, and BNPL players to offer installment plans before, during, and post purchase. Includes Mastercard Installments Credential (BNPL) and Mastercard Installments Services for existing card lines.
- Offers for Publishers Network-agnostic platform delivering merchant-funded card-linked offers. Enables publishers to present personalized offers to cardholders, track transactions, match qualifying purchases, and facilitate rewards (cash back, points, miles). Covers 500M+ eligible cardholders across 85+ markets.
- Transaction Notifications Webhook-based API delivering real-time cardholder purchase data after explicit consumer consent, enabling just-in-time experiences, expense management integration, and real-time fraud detection through monitoring of unusual transaction patterns.
- BIN Lookup REST API providing up-to-date Mastercard BIN account range data for authorization routing, fraud prevention, and novel solutions including loyalty checks. Updated daily with filtered searches, single lookups, full downloads, and delta updates.
- Mastercard Bill Pay Remote Payment and Presentment Service (RPPS) enabling billers, financial institutions, and service providers to manage household bill payments through a mobile-first solution connected to Mastercard's biller network.
- Mastercard Send Portfolio of global money movement capabilities powering disbursements, personal payments, and business payments. Enables push payments to debit cards in near-real-time for insurance claims, B2B payments, and consumer transfers.
- Mastercard Gateway Multi-channel global payment processing services with advanced fraud prevention and risk management solutions for merchants and banks. Provides S2I and S2A capabilities with global acquirer coverage.
- Carbon Calculator Experience Service enabling issuers to provide cardholders with transaction-based carbon footprint analysis, spending pattern insights, and optional donation workflows for environmental causes like forest restoration.
- Agent Toolkit (MCP Server) Model Context Protocol (MCP) server connecting AI assistants and IDEs (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT) to Mastercard Developers for AI-assisted API discovery, documentation lookup, and code generation.
- Start Path Small Business Program Collaboration program enabling startups and small business technology companies to partner with Mastercard, access its global payment network, integrate 89+ APIs, and scale solutions for small businesses across payments, open finance, fraud prevention, and commerce.
Quantifiable outcome
- 12% increase in customer satisfaction with claims process
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Start Path Small Business
Customer profileNamed customers5 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Start Path Small Business technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration7 records
AI capability9 records
Feature7 records
Start Path Small Business partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- First Abu Dhabi BankcoreFirst Abu Dhabi Bank introduces SlicePay BNPL card in UAE powered by Mastercard Installments credential program.
- Accelya GroupcoreAccelya Group partners with Mastercard Gateway to provide airline customers with a fully branded end-to-end payment solution. Mastercard Gateway provides white-label solution as Accelya Payment Gateway with S2I and S2A capabilities, global acquirer coverage, and payment type coverage.
- BrexcoreOpen Finance partner connecting business account data for SMB financial management and lending services.
- DwollacoreOpen Finance partner for account connectivity enabling payment initiation and account data access.
- ExperiancoreOpen Finance partner providing credit and financial data for lending decisioning and account verification.
- SyncteracoreOpen Finance partner for banking-as-a-service platform connectivity.
- nCinocoreOpen Finance partner for commercial banking and loan origination integration.
- LoanDepotcoreOpen Finance partner for mortgage lending and real-time account data access.
- SoFicoreSoFi launches early access to pay in 4 through Mastercard Installments program, enabling flexible payment options for customers.
- DatabrickscoreMastercard uses Databricks for AI-powered API quality assessment workflow, utilizing Model Serving for LLM-based analysis and Unity Catalog for storing findings and configurations.
Scale indicators8 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Start Path Small Business competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Stripe: Developer-first payments platform with a comprehensive API suite covering acceptance, issuing (Issuing), Connect for marketplaces, fraud (Radar), and financial data. Closest functional peer to Mastercard Developers given the API-first, sandbox-driven, self-serve model.
- Marqeta: Modern card-issuing platform with a developer-first API model, JIT funding, and tokenization. Direct competitor to Mastercard Processing and MDES-adjacent issuing capabilities, particularly for fintechs and embedded card programs.
- Dwolla: ACH-focused open finance and account-to-account payment platform. Named Mastercard partner but also a functional competitor for B2B/A2A payment initiation and bank connectivity use cases addressed by Mastercard's Open Finance and A2A Commerce APIs.
- Plaid: Open finance connectivity layer providing account data, identity verification, and payment initiation. Direct competitor to Mastercard's Open Finance / Finicity offering and to Transaction Notifications for consumer-permissioned data access.
- Visa Developer Platform: Visa's equivalent developer portal offering APIs for payments, tokenization (VTS), fraud (Visa Risk Manager), open banking, and BNPL. Directly comparable as the competing global card network's API platform targeting the same developer and fintech audience.
Emerging players
- Token: Open banking / account-to-account payments platform serving European banks and TPPs. Comparable to Mastercard's Open Finance for Europe (~3,000 banks) and to A2A Commerce, particularly in PSD2-driven markets.
- Klarna: BNPL network that issues its own cards and exposes APIs to merchants. Comparable to Mastercard Installments at the merchant-integration layer, particularly for pay-in-4 / pay-later experiences.
Broad incumbents
- Adyen: Global payments platform offering unified processing, acquiring, and value-added APIs. Named Mastercard customer but also a competitor on gateway/MG-level capabilities; comparable at the platform layer even though it routes across networks.
- PayPal Developer (Braintree / PayPal Open): PayPal's developer portal exposing APIs for payments, checkout, payouts, and invoicing. Broader incumbent offering that competes with Mastercard Send, Gateway, and Checkout-style APIs across merchants and platforms.
- Block (Square) Developer Platform: Square's developer portal offers payments, card-on-file, invoicing, and banking-as-a-service APIs. Comparable developer-first platform competing with Mastercard for SMB merchant and developer mindshare, especially within the Start Path Small Business audience.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Start Path Small Business social profiles
Digital presenceStart Path Small Business financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Start Path Small Business leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Start Path Small Business subsidiaries and ownership
Company hierarchySubsidiaries1 record
Start Path Small Business funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Start Path Small Business M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments5 records
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Start Path Small Business
What does Start Path Small Business do?
Start Path Small Business is a Mastercard program that enables startups and small businesses to collaborate with Mastercard, scale payment and commerce solutions, and integrate with Mastercard's suite of 89+ APIs covering payments, security, open finance, fraud prevention, and loyalty. Program participants gain access to Mastercard's global payment network, developer tools, sandbox environments, and Mastercard Engage partner ecosystem to build and commercialize small business solutions.
Is Start Path Small Business a public or private company?
Start Path Small Business is a public company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently operating.
When was Start Path Small Business founded?
Start Path Small Business was founded in 1966.
Where is Start Path Small Business based?
Start Path Small Business is headquartered in Purchase, United States, in the North America region.
How does Start Path Small Business make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. API Access and Licensing is the primary driver. The others are payment Network Services and installment Program Fees.
Who are Start Path Small Business's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Stripe, Marqeta, Dwolla, Plaid and Visa Developer Platform. Emerging players are Token and Klarna. Broad incumbents are Adyen, PayPal Developer (Braintree / PayPal Open) and Block (Square) Developer Platform.
Does Start Path Small Business have an API?
Yes. Mastercard Developers provides a comprehensive API platform with 89 products covering payments, fraud prevention, identity verification, open finance, loyalty management, and digital commerce. APIs use OAuth 1.0a and OAuth 2.0 with FAPI 2.0 authentication. The platform supports sandbox environments for testing and provides SDK samples in Python and Java, with a Spring Boot reference app available. Developer documentation is at developer.mastercard.com.
What industry is Start Path Small Business in?
Start Path Small Business's product category is Payment API Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is FSABAAAI, Small Business Banking (Microbusiness/Sole Proprietor). Its NAICS code is 52221 and its SIC code is 7372.