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. 1
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. 2
Cloudflare is tying its application-security suite to attack-surface monitoring tools from Mastercard subsidiaries Recorded Future and RiskRecon, according to the companies. 2
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.” 3
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.” 3
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. 1
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. 4
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. 5
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. 6
