MasterCard announced a partnership with alternative scoring startup Entrepreneurial Finance Labs (EFL) earlier this week. The deal did not involve the payments giant taking an ownership stake.

EFL offers credit providers in developing markets with sophisticated tools to improve underwriting for small business loans.

Co-founder and COO DJ DiDonna of EFL confirmed to Bank Innovation that the deal involved no change in ownership for the startup. The two companies jointly approached and signed a new customer, Banco BHD of the Dominican Republic, prior to the public announcement of the partnership.

EFL, profiled here  by Bank Innovation, grew out of the Harvard University Research Lab in 2010. Its model employs “psychometric scoring” — a questionnaire, the answers to which are analyzed by the company’s proprietary software — to determine the credit worthiness of small- or micro-business customers that may have no traditional credit data to examine. The company focuses on developing regions where thin-file or underbanked customers are common, such Latin America, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Established institutions with deep pockets such as MasterCard could take a number of approaches when dealing with startups such as EFL. Choosing partnership over acquisition signals that the Purchase, N.Y.-based payments giant is treading softly and pursuing multiple bets in the alternative scoring space. EFL’s technology and methods are unorthodox, so MasterCard will likely want to study its model firsthand.

EFL has enabled approximately $200 million in small business loans to small businesses in the developing world in its three-year history. Details of the partnership can be found here.