Enable Modern Money Movement with Astra + Mastercard Move

How Astra and Mastercard Move work together to deliver near real-time payments across cards, for both domestic payments and international corridors, through a single API.

Every payout has a waiting period built into it. The gig worker who finished a shift hours ago. The customer watching for a refund to land. The seller who can’t fund the next order until the last one clears. The money is already owed. The only question is how long it sits in transit, and every hour it sits shows up later as churn, support tickets, and lost trust.

That part is hard to build. Beyond processing a single payment, businesses need KYC and compliance frameworks, fraud and risk operations, settlement, and reconciliation infrastructure to be successful. None of it is the core product, and all of it takes years to build correctly.

Astra and Mastercard Move power modern money movement, unlocking near real-time payments to and from eligible cards and bank accounts through a single API, with operational, compliance, and risk components already built in.

Astra and Mastercard Move make four core money movement flows available through a single integration:

• Card-to-Card Transfers. Move funds in near real-time between eligible debit and credit cards. Powers peer-to-peer payments, wallet transfers, and instant consumer deposits.
• Account-to-Card Payouts. Push funds from a bank account directly to an eligible debit card. Powers gig worker payouts, earned wage access, insurance disbursements, and loan disbursements.
• Card-to-Account Transfers. Move funds from an eligible debit or credit card into a linked bank account. Powers brokerage account funding, digital wallet top-up, and stablecoin experiences.
• Cross-border Transfers. Send funds internationally across supported Mastercard Move corridors. Powers contractor payments, remittances, and international seller payouts.

Mastercard Move is Mastercard’s global money movement platform, reaching nearly 17 billion account, card, wallet, and cash-out endpoints and more than 95% of the world’s banked population across 200+ countries and territories in 150+ currencies*. Astra brings the API, SDKs, compliance and risk operations, and orchestration layer that turn that network into a feature a product team can ship in weeks.

Mastercard Move figures valid as of October 2025, representing combined totals across Mastercard Move solutions. Payout options subject to market availability.

 

Mastercard Move figures valid as of October 2025, representing combined totals across Mastercard Move solutions. Payout options subject to market availability.

A typical Astra + Mastercard Move transaction has four stages:

• Initiation. A user takes an action inside your product: requesting a payout, funding an account, sending money to another user. You capture the necessary card or bank details using Astra’s APIs directly or our drop-in SDKs.
• Routing. Your backend makes a single API call to Astra. Astra evaluates the transaction against eligibility, compliance, and fraud rules, then routes it to Mastercard Move.
• Delivery. Mastercard Move delivers funds to the recipient’s eligible card or account in near real-time, typically within seconds, depending on the receiving institution.
• Reconciliation. Astra confirms the transaction, handles any returns or exceptions, and surfaces the full record through reporting dashboards for your finance and operations teams.

One integration, one set of credentials, one operational surface across every flow.

Speed without the build

Mastercard Move delivers funds in near real-time, closing the gap between when money is owed and when it lands. Astra makes that speed available through a developer-friendly API in weeks.

Compliance and risk, already operational

Mastercard’s network provides security infrastructure proven at global scale: encryption, fraud analytics, and risk controls. Astra layers operational compliance on top. KYC and AML workflows, transaction monitoring, chargeback handling, and risk operations are part of the platform, not separate vendors to source and integrate.

Turn payment cost into a revenue line

Customers can apply optional fees to instant payout transactions, converting what has historically been a cost center into a margin contributor. Combined with Astra’s pre-funding model, which removes the need for dedicated cash reserves or treasury operations, product teams can launch new payout features without standing up new infrastructure or absorbing balance sheet risk.

Reach the last mile, cash included

Mastercard Move reaches well beyond cards. Its endpoints include bank accounts, digital wallets, and cash-out locations, covering remittance corridors that card-only rails never touch. Astra puts all of it behind one API, so a payout, remittance, or top-up lands where the recipient actually is: on a card, in an account, in a wallet, or as cash at a pickup counter.

Astra and Mastercard Move are designed to make instant money movement available to product teams in weeks, not quarters. Most customers complete a sandbox integration in days and launch in production within a single quarter.

Contact the Astra team at astrafi.com/demo or sign up for sandbox access at dashboard-sandbox.astra.finance.

 

 

© 2026 Astra Inc. All rights reserved. Mastercard and Mastercard Move are registered trademarks of Mastercard International Incorporated.