Payment Tech Giant Mastercard to Tap Indian Fintech Ecosystem

Recently, the payment technology giant Mastercard announced that it would be investing $1 billion in India over the next five years.

Mastercard has plans in the pipeline to build its first data processing centre in India. This centre will be the first one the company has set up outside the US. The setting up of this facility is estimated to be $350 million.

Mastercard aims to set up a fully functional centre in the coming 18 months. The company hopes to generate over 1,000 jobs with the setting up of the centre.

“Till now, all processing related services were provided from the US centre. But as more and more services that are not card-or brand-related emerge, we see an opportunity to build a (data) processing centre in India. The opportunity in India is indisputable. The tectonic growth we have seen in digital payments post demonetisation, shows we have just started out on the journey,” Porush Singh, Division President, South Asia was quoted saying to Quartz.

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Mastercard is also going to set up a service hub in India. The service hub will focus on providing other value-added services such as tokenisation, cybersecurity, intelligence solutions, authentication, and data analytics.

As per the white paper released by ACI Worldwide in association with AGS Transact Technologies, digital transactions are estimated to touch $1 trillion by 2025 in India. In lieu of this prediction, Mastercard is aiming to double the number of merchants it has on its roster from the current 5.2 million to 10 million by 2020.

The payment tech giant has taken an active interest in the Indian startup ecosystem. It has set up a global Start Path programme to help later-stage tech startups to scale up quickly.

From the initial 29 person team in 2013, Mastercard has grown to a 2,000 member workforce in India, making up 14% of its global workforce.