Microsoft and MasterCard, a Melodious Match

Saw this article from Pymnts.com ("MasterCard and Microsoft: A Dream Team for Small Businesses") come across my computer screen today. At first glance, it's nothing paticularly revolutionary-- Microsoft will be offering cloud solutions for businesses and MasterCard is their chosen payment machine. In turn, MasterCard will provide a 10% discount for all business owners who enroll in cloud services by paying with their MasterCard.

I am intrigued though because this article shows:

• The financial services industry is slowly realizing that there is a lot of money to be had in the small business niche (and not just in the Square realms). In my experiences, small business is typically the majority or close to majority (depending on the exact line of service you're looking at, corporate vs consumer card, bank holding, loans, etc.) of the merchant segment. They typically don't produce more than $500,000 in revenue in a year, but there's a lot of them. So in this game, you're really making money a penny at a time, but you're making it off of millions of merchants simultaneously....the math works out. I'll be interested to see where else this exploration of small business leads us
• That there is an increasing focus on cloud services (duh), but also of providers of cloud services to be partnering with non-technology companies in order to make their offers richer and their reach wider. Amazon, for example, rolled out a gift organizer feature on their website with the sponsorship of Discover. Although this is not the exact same thing as what's happening with Microsoft and MasterCard, it is something that the Ms could do together in the future. Combine Microsoft's massive monstrosity of machinery, mechanisms and media (hahaha sorry I couldn't help myself) and MasterCard's large consumer base (which spans multiple business segments, whereas Microsoft makes most of their money from large corporations), and the benefits are great:
• Microsoft could expand into other market segments (mid market, small business)
• MasterCard increases their revenue from interchange charges across the board
• MasterCard gains increasingly visibilty to the "large fish"
• MasterCard and Microsoft together form a relationship that could morph into consumer products. I know, this sounds crazy, but hear me out. MasterCard is aggressively moving into the alternative payments/mobile payments area, backed with a lot of industry expertise, funds, and a focus on staying ahead of the regulatory curve with their launch of chip solutions, etc. Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems, extensive experience in producing consumer products and is moving into the mobile product space by offering their Windows7 phone. Match made in heaven for mobile payments? Maybe....