When a bank fails, somebody has to pay the merchants. In this case, that somebody was Mastercard, and the bill came to approximately R$2.5 billion, or around $440 million.
Now the card network is knocking on doors across Brazil’s payments industry, asking major payment processors to help shoulder the remaining losses from the collapse of Banco Master SA and its fintech subsidiary Will Bank.
How a fintech collapse became Mastercard’s problem
Banco Master SA was placed into extrajudicial liquidation by the Central Bank of Brazil on November 18, 2025. When the lights went out, Will Bank, its fintech arm that issued Mastercard-branded credit cards primarily to lower-income consumers, left behind roughly R$5 billion (approximately $880 million to $1 billion) in unsettled merchant payments.
In Brazil’s payments ecosystem, card networks like Mastercard can be held accountable for guaranteeing transactions when an issuing bank or its fintech partner fails. Mastercard stepped in during the first 30 days after the liquidation and covered half of those unsettled obligations, roughly R$2.5 billion, out of its own funds.
