# Partnership Models
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-us/documentation/participant-model/index.md

As the possibilities and use cases for open finance grow, customers are increasingly seeking innovative ways to integrate into Mastercard's Open Finance capabilities with simpler, faster and frictionless onboarding experiences.

[Mastercard's Engage program](https://www.mastercard.us/engage/#/en/home/open-banking) offers different partnership models to implement Open Finance services with ease for you and your affiliated partners. These models are not mutually exclusive, and can be used separately or together to meet your business objectives.

* [Partner Linked Access](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-us/documentation/participant-model/partner-linked/index.md) --- This model is designed to serve more fintechs and merchants that require Mastercard's Account Opening and Payment services without having to maintain Payments Card Industry (PCI) and Personal Identifiable Information (PII) compliance, which can introduce friction during integration.

  In the Partner Linked Access model, there are two partners involved who both need to integrate with Mastercard---a Direct Partner (fintech or merchant or a payment institution), and a linked third-party (e.g., processor), who offers additional payment processing functionality.

  Once integrated, the Direct Partner shares the consented third-party access token with the linked third-party to retrieve the consented consumer data from Mastercard Open Finance and process the payment on the customer's behalf. This simplifies your data compliance responsibilities, reduces friction and opens up various payment-related opportunities, such as account funding, peer-to-peer payments, person-to-merchant payments, and more.
* [Partner Direct Model](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-us/documentation/participant-model/partner-direct/index.md) --- In this model, the Direct Partner acts as a distributor of Mastercard's Open Finance services to their affiliated partners. The Direct Partner performs a one-time integration with any of the Mastercard's Open Finance solutions and once integrated, the Direct Partner can quickly scale their solution by leveraging the [Mastercard Developers API](https://developer.mastercard.com/mastercard-developers-api/documentation/) to onboard their affiliated partners. This ease-of-onboarding amplifies the outreach to more customers with differentiated offerings such as loan origination, financial management services, account opening, payment initiation services and more.