New York, Feb 17, 2026, 13:51 EST — Regular session
- Mastercard was up roughly 1% in early afternoon, moving alongside other payments stocks.
- The company is teaming up with Cloudflare to develop cyber-defense tools aimed at small businesses and critical infrastructure, both firms said.
- Friday brings the U.S. PCE inflation data, and traders are eyeing it for signals on rates and the state of consumer demand.
Mastercard climbed 0.9% to $523.31 on Tuesday, notching a modest advance as investors tilted into financial stocks during a volatile session.
Why it’s material at this moment: payments stocks often react to shifts in consumer spending and travel outlooks. Now, with a tech-driven selloff fresh in mind, traders are weighing the timing of the next U.S. rate move.
Mastercard and Cloudflare on this day announced they’ve teamed up in a strategic partnership, planning to roll out tools designed to shield small businesses, government entities, and critical infrastructure from cyber threats targeting web-facing assets.
Cloudflare is tying its application-security suite to attack-surface monitoring tools from Mastercard subsidiaries Recorded Future and RiskRecon, according to the companies.
Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen didn’t mince words: “For small businesses, critical infrastructure, and governments, a cyberattack is more than a technical hurdle. It is an existential threat.” Business Wire
Johan Gerber, who leads Security Solutions at Mastercard, put it bluntly: “With small businesses accounting for about half of the world’s GDP, closing the resilience gap is critical.” Business Wire
Mastercard trailed some of its rivals. Shares of Visa climbed 1.9%, while American Express advanced 2.3%. Financials outpaced the wider U.S. market.
Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee signaled that “several” rate cuts are on the table this year, provided inflation continues its march toward the Fed’s 2% goal. Reuters
The cyber tie-up is still in its early days, and there’s little visibility yet on when—or even if—it’ll start driving revenue or wider uptake. For smaller companies, security budgets tend to fluctuate.
Long-term worries around competition and politics continue to dog the major U.S. card networks. UK banks, according to The Times, are gearing up to discuss a homegrown rival to Visa and Mastercard.
On deck is Friday’s U.S. Personal Income and Outlays release, featuring the PCE price index, which the Fed uses as its main inflation yardstick. The data drops Feb. 20.
