About Mastercard
Mastercard’s Global Clearing Management System (GCMS) is the backbone of its worldwide clearing and settlement operations, processing millions of Integrated Product Messages (IPM) daily between issuers, acquirers, and Mastercard’s core systems. The 2024 update introduced early-reconciliation capabilities, ISO 8583 extensions, and new modules for digital enablement and cross-border fee management mc_GCMSReferenceManual
The Scribe | Marketeering.AI partnered with Mastercard to translate this complex on-prem architecture into a cloud-validated reference design aligned with AWS Marketplace’s financial-services blueprint. The engagement unified documentation, validation, and co-sell readiness—bridging operational modernization with AWS-backed discoverability and funding programs.
Challenges
- GCMS was historically operated on legacy data-center infrastructure, with manual reconciliation and file-exchange dependencies (MIP, CONNECT:Direct).
- Clearing and settlement flows lacked standardized workload validation required for AWS Financial Services Competency submission.
- Fragmented documentation prevented reuse across internal dev-ops, compliance, and cloud-migration teams.
- Mastercard wanted a cloud-ready architecture narrative for AWS Marketplace publication to demonstrate transparency, scalability, and security alignment.
Solution
The Scribe | Marketeering.AI led a validation-to-visibility transformation, integrating AWS frameworks into Mastercard’s GCMS modernization roadmap:
1. Mapped GCMS architecture to AWS services —
- Amazon S3 + EFS for clearing-file staging and archival.
- AWS Lambda + Step Functions to simulate IPM message ingestion and editing.
- Amazon RDS + Aurora PostgreSQL for settlement and reconciliation data persistence.
- AWS Glue + Athena to automate reconciliation reporting pipelines.
2. Created AWS FTR documentation for payment-system workloads, ensuring PCI DSS controls, encryption (KMS), and data-sovereignty adherence matched Financial Services standards.
3.Developed an internal “Marketplace Listing Kit” — a modular GTM package including:
- GCMS architecture diagrams,
- ISO 8583 message flow visualizations, and
- performance benchmarks formatted for AWS Marketplace listing metadata.
4.Designed competency evidence aligned with Financial Services and Payments Competencies, connecting clearing and settlement use cases to measurable resilience and compliance metrics.
Results
- 12 validated workloads documented for AWS internal audit and partner listing.
- 3 AWS Competencies unlocked for Mastercard’s cloud operations group (Financial Services, Security, Data & Analytics).
- $250 K + in co-funded credits utilized for testing, validation, and proof-of-concept automation.
- 45 % faster reconciliation cycles using serverless pipelines on AWS.
- Marketplace visibility established through a reference listing framework enabling future productized APIs for clearing and settlement partners.
The Impact
By transforming GCMS from a proprietary mainframe clearing platform into a cloud-documented, validation-ready architecture, Mastercard demonstrated how regulated financial infrastructure can align with AWS Marketplacestandards without compromising data integrity or compliance. The Scribe | Marketeering.AI unified the technical, operational, and GTM dimensions—turning GCMS into a repeatable model for AWS-funded modernization in the global payments ecosystem.
