Mastercard SME Academy Targets Europe’s Cybersecurity Confidence Gap With Free Interactive Learning Platform #

Mastercard has launched a free digital education platform for small businesses in Europe after company-commissioned research found that most SMEs treat cybersecurity as a priority but fewer than half have basic defenses in place.

The platform, Mastercard SME Academy: Cybersecurity, was announced on 3 November. It delivers short, interactive modules designed for small business owners with limited time for technical training.

The launch follows findings from Mastercard’s Dreamonomics research, which surveyed more than 6,000 small and medium-sized enterprises across 18 countries. In participating European markets, the study found that 64% of SMEs rate cyber protection as a high priority, but only 37% are actively deploying basic defenses such as antivirus software or firewalls.

The curriculum covers threat scenarios small businesses are most likely to encounter: recognizing phishing attempts, understanding how data breaches occur, strengthening passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, managing employee and third-party access controls, handling links and attachments safely, protecting business devices from malware, and reducing exposure to identity theft and impersonation attacks.

Tulsi Narayan, Executive Vice President for Commercial and New Payment Flows Business at Mastercard Europe, said the platform is designed to reach business owners without requiring them to become security specialists, offering expert-led guidance on threats most relevant to everyday operations.

The platform has launched in four markets: Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom, with a broader European rollout planned for 2027. Mastercard said the initiative is part of a wider goal to provide free digital resources to 10 million European SMEs by 2030. The company said it has already helped more than 4.6 million small businesses across Europe digitize over the past five years.

Source: FinancialIT