Aims to develop India as global technology node

Mastercard on Monday announced a $1 billion investment in India over the next five years aimed at converting India into a vital node in the company’s infrastructure, and also to continue business expansion.

“There is a very large presence that Mastercard has built, and now, after having seen the last five years, we are very bullish on the overall Indian economy and what the future looks like, and clearly very excited about the digital payments ecosystem and payments ecosystem in general,” Ari Sarker, co-president, Asia Pacific at Mastercard told The Hindu.

“Therefore, we are making a commitment of another $1 billion in India in the coming five years, and what is interesting in this investment is that roughly $300 million is going to go into an investment where India will become a part of our global technology nodes of our network,” Mr. Sarker added.

Previous investment

Mastercard has previously invested $1 billion in India over the last five years, Mr. Sarker explained, which have resulted in several acquisitions, increased employment in the India offices, and improvements in technology development capabilities. “If you look at 2014, our presence in India was only 30-odd people, which was largely focussed on banks in India for our sales and distribution effort,” Mr. Sarker said.

“Today, 14% of our global workforce is based in India and we are developing significant technology capabilities out of India through our technology hubs in Pune [and] Vadodara.”

The about $300 million portion of the investment will make India a node for the delivery of payment processing capabilities. “In essence, all of our processing capabilities [such as] authorisation, clearing, settlement, tokenisation, fraud and safety services, all of that will be locally delivered,” he said. “It will take us two years to build up.”