Mojaloop, AfricaNenda and Mastercard focus on A2A protection

A fast transfer leaves an important question: what happens when the payer has been deceived? On 29 September 2026, Mastercard announced collaborations with the Mojaloop Foundation and AfricaNenda. The Mojaloop work will explore A2A Protect; the second partnership supports trusted instant-payment systems.

Protection contains three different jobs

Preventing a suspicious transfer, investigating a complaint and deciding compensation are separate processes. They should be examined separately because a strong risk decision before money moves does not, by itself, establish responsibility after a disputed transaction.

That makes the details of implementation important. The merchant needs clear notification and evidence-submission procedures. The buyer needs an explanation of the case status. Participants need an agreed way to exchange information and implement the decision.

Trust is tested by the exception

Imagine an ordinary purchase followed by the payer reporting deception. The shop should not have to guess the rules of another payment method. It needs the terms of the specific A2A service through which it received money: who owns the case, what is expected from the merchant and when the matter closes.

A familiar card-protection promise should therefore not be transplanted into the new product in advance. A partnership sets a direction of work; the customer's actual outcome depends on implemented processes and obligations. This distinction matters particularly in public descriptions of payment options.

There is also a reason to look beyond one shop. If participants pass a complaint among themselves without a shared status, the customer experiences the entire network as unreliable. A coherent dispute journey may be as important to continued use as an easy first transfer.

The next substantive milestone is tools that markets can use and the conditions attached to them. Those will allow an assessment of whether problem-resolution time falls and customers receive clearer outcomes. The collaboration announcement does not establish those results yet. Its significance is that protection is being treated as part of the instant-payment product rather than left outside the discussion of speed.

What it means for merchants and PSPs

For merchants and PSPs adding instant A2A payments, the announcement is a reminder that speed and protection are different parts of the product, and the second needs its own work before launch.

• Document your own process for handling deception claims on A2A payments: who receives the case, which documents are collected and within what timelines.
• Ask the provider whether the chosen scheme has a refund or compensation mechanism and on what terms.
• Check which risk signals are available before a payment is sent and whether the merchant can use them.
• Avoid promising buyers card-style protection until it is written into the rules of the specific service.
• Track the share of disputed A2A transactions and their time to resolution separately.

What to watch next

The key details will be the rules for allocating liability between participants, case-handling timelines and the availability of tools in specific markets. PSPs connected to instant-payment systems should work out in advance how such mechanisms would fit into existing fraud and support processes, and what data they would need to exchange.

Another practical step is to review the copy on the website and in the app. If the checkout describes the A2A option with words such as "protected payment", the promise needs to match the actual rules of the service. A gap between marketing copy and the real process creates both reputational and legal risk. Support teams should receive response scripts for such cases in advance, so the first conversation with a buyer is not improvised.