Elucidate × Mastercard

Agenda for today.

  1. 02

    Review previous engagement

    The FI-assessment architecture deployed in MMCP staging and a sample EFI-scored report from the work already delivered under our existing MSA and SOWs.

  2. 04

    Proposed solution

    The Commercial Payments offering: Elucidate's Payment Validation Agent that ingests RSP policy, pre-validates each payment, and attaches a routing recommendation, plus a proposed POC on historic corridor data.

01Background Elucidate × Mastercard

Independent financial crime risk infrastructure.

  • Elucidate is a BaFin-authorised, ESMA-registered financial crime risk infrastructure provider.
  • We score financial institutions and their transactions against the Elucidate FinCrime Index (EFI) and deliver that scoring as infrastructure other platforms can build on.
// What we do
EFI

Elucidate FinCrime Index

A  explainable risk score for FIs and transactions, combining static profile attributes with dynamic behavioural data.

// Where we fit
API

Built to be built on

Delivered as risk infrastructure that plugs into existing workflows.

// How we work
Risk Agents

Governed & auditable

Autonomous agents under bounded autonomy. Every decision logged with an explainable evidence trail.

02Previously delivered Elucidate × Mastercard

Our existing engagement with Mastercard.

This is not an introductory engagement, Elucidate has successfully collaborated with Mastercard on cross-border commercial payments for nearly two years.

// Commercial
MSA · in place

Master Services Agreement signed

Master Services Agreement executed with Mastercard procurement. No further commercial onboarding is required.

// Delivery
2 SOWs executed

Two Statements of Work delivered

Two scoped engagements have been completed with Mastercard, including the sample EFI-scored report shown in the following section.

// Technical
MMCP staging

Integrated with the MMCP engineering team

The Elucidate platform is integrated with the MMCP engineering team's staging environment. Connectivity and integration work has been completed.

// Architecture deployed in MMCP staging

Entity resolution → Enrichment → FI assessment → Bank workflow

The reference architecture currently deployed in MMCP staging. 

OPEN SOURCE DATA PROPRIETARY DATA WOLFSBERG DDQ REQUEST ENTITY RESOLUTION FI ENTITY ENRICHMENT FI graph + signal THIRD-PARTY DATA INTEGRATIONS BANKERS ALMANAC KYC REGISTRY D&B DUN & BRADSTREET OTHER EXTERNAL DATA API SYNTHESIS FI ASSESSMENT RISK SCORING TRANSACTIONS BEHAVIOURAL ACTIVITY CHECK API BANK SIDE BANK WORKFLOW TOOL GREEN LIST MANUAL REVIEW
// Sample deliverable

EFI-scored FI report — UBS, Mastercard test, high-score sample.

Output produced in the previous engagement: a single financial institution scored end-to-end against the Elucidate FinCrime Index methodology. The same scoring engine and data spine underpin the product proposal that follows.

03Problem statement Elucidate × Mastercard

Complex risk routing across 200–250 RSPs.

  • Onboarding a new originating bank requires bilateral negotiation with every RSP.
  • Origination from higher-risk markets, nested flows extending to the fourth parties, crypto provenance, and the recently introduced collections business with SME nesting all compound the operational complexity and manual workload.
Onboarding

Every new originating bank requires bilateral negotiation with each RSP. Risk appetites are agreed pair-by-pair and do not propagate automatically.

High-risk origination

High risk markets and nested flows, for example, demand case-by-case triage that does not scale operationally.

Increased Complexity

New flows, such as crypto provenance flows and the collections business with SME nesting, create renewed friction and misalignment.

Routing

Payments are bound to specific RSPs at the corridor level rather than routed dynamically, because no component reads each RSP's policy at run-time.

04  NEW PROPOSAL Proposed: the Payment Validation Agent. Addressing the RSP-routing problem.
04Commercial Payments For Mastercard · Payment Validation Agent

The Payment Validation Agent, for RSP routing.

  • Mastercard operates a network of approximately 200–250 RSPs, each maintaining its own risk appetite.
  • Payments are currently bound to specific RSPs at the corridor level rather than routed dynamically, because no system component reads each RSP's policy at run-time.
  • The Payment Validation Agent addresses precisely that gap: it ingests RSP policies, pre-validates each payment against them, and delivers the transaction with a routing recommendation already attached.
RSP-aware routing Real-time pre-validation EFI-backed scoring BaFin · ESMA Drafted justifications
// Platform architecture

A schema-and-scoring stack, building up to the Payment Validation Agent.

Layer 01 · Foundation

Common Data Layer

A single schema that feeds every upstream component, including transaction data, counterparty data, RSP policy statements, and dynamic behavioural signals, all normalised so the scoring engines and the agent layer operate on a consistent view.

One schema RSP policies ingested Real-time
Layer 02 · Scoring + policy

Transaction Scoring & EFI

A composite, explainable risk score per transaction and counterparty , combining static profile attributes (geography, sector, ownership, network) and dynamic behavioural data, in real time. The Elucidate FinCrime Index sits underneath as the institutional benchmark, with independent standing on both sides of any transaction.

Static + dynamic Explainable Transparent BAFIN- and ESMA-regulated
Layer 03 · Autonomous agents

Payment Validation Agent

Real-time pre-validation of every payment against the schema. The transaction arrives with a routing recommendation already attached, the evidence assembled across the underlying modules, and a drafted justification in every case. 

When an RSP changes its appetite, routing recommendations update everywhere immediately, without each pair being renegotiated bilaterally.

Pre-validation Routing recommendation Documented justification Bounded autonomy
// The agent in operation

Today's routing, then routing with the agent.

Step through the current hard-tied path one hop at a time, then switch slides to see how the Payment Validation Agent intervenes — pre-validating against RSP appetite within the network and enabling a routing path that the current corridor mapping would not select.

01 02 03 04 05 06 CORPORATE MSB SENDER BANK MASTERCARD RSP CORRIDOR-TIED CORPORATE ORIGINATOR SIDE NETWORK RECEIVER SIDE
STEP 0 / 5
Slide 01 Today
RSP hard-tied to the corridor

The corridor's mapped RSP is the only available option. If its risk appetite does not match the payment, the flow is held or rejected — even where another RSP in the network would have accepted it.

Slide 02 Agent in-flight
RSP policies read at run-time

The Payment Validation Agent evaluates each RSP's risk-appetite statement against the transaction's composite score and pre-validates the payment prior to settlement. The routing recommendation is delivered with the transaction, not as a downstream triage task.

Outcome Routing
An RSP whose appetite absorbs the flow

The same payment routes through the same Mastercard rail to an RSP whose policy aligns with the transaction profile. When an RSP modifies its risk appetite, every routing recommendation across the network is updated in real time, eliminating the need for bilateral renegotiation.

// Walkthrough

Walkthrough of the Payment Validation Agent.

This document accompanies the walkthrough requested in our recent discussion. The session will cover the material above against your actual RSP appetite logic, followed by scoping of the corridor to be used for the proof of concept.

// Network monitoring

Continuous oversight across the RSP network.

Beyond per-payment validation, every institution in the network is scored across FinCrime, sanctions, governance and reputation dimensions — with high-risk signal counts and lending status tracked side by side, and thresholds set per segment.

// Signals

Risk events, surfaced and triaged per entity.

Every regulatory action, sanctions development, and adverse-media event is captured as a discrete signal — categorised, linked to its source articles, and tracked to closure. Below: open signals on a single counterparty.

// Proposed proof of concept

Validate on a single corridor  using your historical data.

Provide a 12-month transaction file from one of the affected higher-risk corridors. Elucidate will  analyse RSP risk appetites based on processed traffic, process the file through the Payment Validation Agent against an indicative appetite profile, and deliver a comparison against your current decisioning.

OUTCOME 01

Where the agent agrees

Cases where the agent produces the same decision and routes to the same RSP, with a drafted justification attached Establish a baseline alignment between the schema and your current decisioning.

OUTCOME 02

Where it would have routed differently

Flows that an RSP with a compatible risk appetite could have accepted  and flagging payments not currently reachable through the existing corridor mapping.

OUTCOME 03

Where it would have released a held payment

Payments rejected or escalated by the existing manual review queue that the agent would have cleared, accompanied by the supporting evidence trail.


DURATION · 1–2 months end to end from data receipt
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