In the News

Facing ever-mounting pressure from the likes of Square, Paypal, Google Wallet, and others, traditional credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard are facing technology-driven challenges unlike any they’ve seen before. And while the Internet appears to be the primary disruptive element powering those new challenges, MasterCard has decided that its strategy for competing with payment service upstarts lies in creating an innovative new card that is fully interactive.

MasterCard Inc. (MA) became the first payments network to issue a license to a Myanmar bank as the Southeast Asian nation moves toward integrating with the global financial system after decades of military rule.

MasterCard entered the agreement this month with Myanmar’s Co-Operative Bank Ltd., which has the largest network of automated teller machines in the country, according to a statement today. The license will allow the bank to issue MasterCard-branded cards and enable merchants to accept them, according to the statement.

JOHANNESBURG–MasterCard Inc. (MA) on Monday announced a new partnership to distribute South African welfare grants through its cards and linked bank accounts, a system designed to curtail fraud and pull poor people into the formal banking sector.

MasterCard is providing branded cards to a small Johannesburg-based lender, Grindrod Bank, and backing payments by Net1 UEPS Technologies Inc. (UEPS), a South African company that designs electronic payment systems in the developing world.

OUR guest this week is an advocate for one of women’s best loved hobbies — shopping! Or actually, more accurately, an advocate for indulgence.

MasterCard Worldwide vice-president for Malaysia & Brunei and senior country manager Jim Cheah comes across as a man who bubbles with enthusiasm when it comes to embracing life and what the world has to offer.

Credit card giant MasterCard is debuting a new study today, called the MasterCard Mobile Payments Readiness Index, which analyzed 34 countries and their readiness to use three types of mobile payments: person to person, mobile commerce and mobile payments at the point of sale. MasterCard actually developed a proprietary algorithm that takes publicly available data as well as MasterCard-owned data to rank countries on their potential to adopt mobile payments.

Yesterday, a pair of surveys arrived that nicely captured the contradictions of business in India. The first, the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence, proclaimed Indian consumers as the most optimistic throughout Asia. Their optimism, the report concludes, is “both deep-rooted and all-pervasive.” The survey polled respondents on their perceptions of quality of life and economic indicators—income, employment, the stock market, and the overall economy.