Eleven fintech start-ups have joined Mastercard’s latest Start Path engagement programme, which enables companies to further develop their value proposition through strategic partnerships and co-innovation opportunities with Mastercard’s global ecosystem of banks and corporates.
The programme was co-developed by Citrine CEO Stephane Wyper and former Mastercard chief innovation officer Garry Lyons and has supported over 500 start-ups since launching in 2014. Notable alumni include Thought Machine, Zeta, Razorpay, Nymi, and AppZen, which recently raised $180 million in Series D funding.
This week, Mastercard has confirmed 11 new additions to the programme: AraxaTech, Hyperlayer, Kamina, Firmly, Amnis, Qawn, Save Your Wardrobe, MoovnPay, Pentatonic, Circulae, and Circulayo.
According to a Mastercard statement, these companies “were handpicked during a competitive global selection process” for their experience in “high-growth sectors including card processing infrastructure, AI-driven credit access, treasury management, and digital commerce”.
Mastercard emphasises its focus on “enabling more environmentally conscious choices”, with the payment giant saying the latest cohort “also features a subset of start-ups dedicated to advancing circular commerce”, with a focus on technologies “for sustainable consumption and lifecycle management of goods”.
2025 cohort
AraxaTech offers a platform called Nautilus that connects payment systems and tests card transactions, while Hyperlayer, the company behind HyperJar, helps financial institutions deliver more hyper-personalised products, and is led by Morgan Stanley veteran Rob Rooney.
Kamina helps financial institutions prevent delinquency, reward healthy behaviour, and expand responsible credit access through its platform. The company secured $3.2 million in pre-seed funding in May last year.
Firmly, led by CEO Kumar Senthil, operates an agentic commerce platform which integrates with AI chatbots, social media, and content sites to allow consumers to complete transactions without leaving their current digital environment.
Amnis provides a global payment platform for mid-sized businesses that enables international transfers, currency exchange, and multi-currency account management. The company currently serves over 4,000 companies and is backed by Swisscom Ventures.
Qawn is a social banking app that allows users across the Middle East to chat, send money, pay bills, and manage finances. Running off Thought Machine’s Vault Core, the company was launched by Jordan Ahli Bank in June 2023.
Moovnpay is a digital wallet solution, developed by Moovn technologies, that helps users make payments across multiple services using a single payment account, with operations particularly focused on serving markets in Africa.
Founded by CEO Hasna Kourda in 2017, Save Your Wardrobe operates a digital platform that helps users organise and manage their clothing inventory with virtual representations of their wardrobe items.
Notable additions focused on the circular economy include Pentatonic, which initially launched as a circular furniture design start-up in 2019, but has since evolved into a commerce platform for product buy-back programmes, reverse logistics, and AI-powered sorting to enable material recovery, resale, and recycling.
Also among the line-up is Circulae, which offers tools that allow banking customers to contribute to the circular economy through everyday financial activities like paying bills, and Circulayo, which, based in the UK, operates a data solution that provides real-time tracking and management of reusable items with insights on status, environmental savings, and improved logistics.
Source: https://www.fintechfutures.com/
