Mastercard is leveraging decades of leadership in payments, data and security to power a new era of artificial intelligence.

With a growing suite of AI capabilities that span the entire commerce cycle, Mastercard is helping businesses take the step from insight to action, always with privacy, trust and human oversight as fundamental pillars. Among the features are: helping businesses understand how money moves, predicting risks and opportunities, recommending and executing the best actions.

As businesses of all sizes navigate an ever-changing world, connected tools that understand context and operate in an integrated way across systems are key to growth. Within this broader vision, and as an extension of Mastercard Agent Suite, Mastercard recently introduced Virtual C-Suite, a new management experience designed to help small businesses operate with executive-level intelligence and decision-making.

Each agent acts as a digital executive, supporting key responsibilities such as finance, security, and marketing. The result: business owners gain deeper insight into their operations and can take concrete actions to grow and protect their companies.

With proprietary insights derived from the billions of transactions processed annually on Mastercard’s network – 175 billion in 2025 alone – combined with each business’s individual financial activity, Virtual C-Suite will offer relevant and trusted recommendations on how businesses pay, receive payments, and manage their working capital.

A new wave of AI innovation is unlocking a transformative opportunity for small businesses by helping to close historic resource gaps.

Why now?

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the global economy, accounting for almost 90 per cent of businesses and more than half of global employment. They also account for about half of gross domestic product in many economies.

However, SMEs face increasing financial and operational complexity, and often rely on small teams or lack dedicated experts to manage the multiple roles involved in running a business.

“Small businesses are the heart of communities, but it’s easy for entrepreneurs to lose sight of the passions that inspired them when they’re buried in spreadsheets and spread across multiple functions,” said Mark Barnett, global vice president of small and midsize businesses at Mastercard.

“We hear these pressures from entrepreneurs every day. With Virtual C-Suite, we bring small business owners the innovative technology, high-quality data at scale, and strategic expertise that were traditionally only available to large enterprises. Our goal is to transform operational complexity into clarity, helping entrepreneurs reclaim time, make smarter decisions, and turn their ambition into measurable growth.”

How it works

Behind the scenes, Virtual C-Suite integrates AI-powered intelligence into accounting systems, business software, and banking apps that small businesses already rely on and use daily. Once integrated, the solution analyses business performance, identifies risks and opportunities, predicts possible outcomes, and recommends immediate actions and long-term strategies to optimise operations and growth.

What’s next

Mastercard will launch the first module, Virtual CFO, later this year across financial institutions, accounting platforms and software providers, to support small businesses. Over time, new executive roles will be added to further support business owners, allowing them to focus on what matters most — operating and growing their companies.

Regardless of where they are in their journey, Mastercard is there to help unlock the potential of businesses through value-added services, including consulting and advisory, insights from the Mastercard Economics Institute (MEI), co-creation, and integrated solutions that address key friction points.

This launch reinforces Mastercard’s role in helping small and medium-sized businesses operate with confidence, building on the company’s leadership in delivering secure and reliable technology, actionable insights, and essential payment and acceptance tools that strengthen long-term growth and financial health.