MasterCard Worldwide has appointed Anna Jones as its Area Head for Southern Africa. The area head position is a new role created by Mastercard Worldwide as part of a recent organisational restructure of the company’s Middle East and Africa division, in order to provide the best possible localised support to MasterCard’s customers while ensuring that it continues to make best use of its global expertise in innovative payment solutions.

MasterCard will now manage the Middle East and Africa region through four distinct areas, namely the Middle East, North Africa and Levant, Central Africa (including East and West Africa) and Southern Africa.

Jones says that MasterCard will follow a three-pronged business strategy in these areas that will aim to provide simple and secure electronic payment solutions to consumers and customers across Southern Africa.

“This involves growing our core business of debit, credit and pre-paid products; diversifying into new geographies and new customer segments such as government and telecommunications companies; and building new businesses in eCommerce, mobile, and information services.

“At the same time we want to use our role as an organization at the Heart of Commerce to deliver a real and positive benefit to society,” she says.

Jones plans to work closely with her team at MasterCard to further develop the organization’s business throughout Southern Africa.

“The Southern Africa region covers a diverse group of markets, where, for example, GDP per capita ranges from $13,100 in Botswana to $400 in Zimbabwe[1]. Additionally, these markets are all at different levels of payments maturity.”

“It is also a region that is, and always has been, heavily reliant on cash – both in the consumer and corporate sectors – which poses many challenges in the way of security, cost and convenience,” she adds.

Jones and her team aim to face this challenge head-on and will be collaborating with customer financial institutions, merchants and governments in key markets within the region to help build up a

robust and inclusive financial infrastructure that will educate consumers and the business community on the advantages of electronic payments.

“With the ever-growing prevalence of remittances and cross-border spend, and with the high number of migrant workers employed across the Southern Africa region, there is a real opportunity to make transacting seamless, safe and as convenient as possible, which is where MasterCard can add real value,” Jones says.

From a financial inclusion perspective, Jones is also eager to help steer MasterCard’s innovation into areas other than pure credit and debit card-based payments.

“The payments industry has a critical role to play in financial inclusion and empowerment and this is where I hope to have the biggest impact in my new role at MasterCard,” she adds.

According to Michael Miebach, division president., Middle East & Africa, MasterCard Worldwide, “Anna brings a wealth of experience to this role and her focus to help customers – existing and new – to make the most of their current and future MasterCard investments, will put MasterCard in a strong position to drive much wider awareness and value for MasterCard products and brand across Southern Africa.”

Jones has spent most of her career in the consulting industry, working across a broad spectrum of industries including financial services, consumer goods and telecommunications.

She holds an MSc in Management from London Business School and as a BSc from Manchester University, and has held positions at some of the world’s leading strategic and management consulting firms, including McKinsey & Company and PWC.

“Jones will undoubtedly bring a fresh perspective on the local payments industry at the helm of MasterCard’s local operations,” Miebach concludes.

 

About MasterCard Worldwide

As a leading global payments company, MasterCard Worldwide prides itself on being at the heart of commerce, helping to make life easier and more efficient for everyone, everywhere. MasterCard serves as a franchisor, processor and advisor to the payments industry, and makes commerce happen by providing a critical economic link among financial institutions, governments, businesses, merchants, and cardholders worldwide. In 2010, $2.7 trillion in gross dollar volume was generated on its products by consumers around the world. Powered by the MasterCard Worldwide Network – the fastest payment processing network in the world – MasterCard processes over 23 billion transactions each year and has the capacity to handle 160 million transactions per hour, with an average network response time of 130 milliseconds and with 99.99 percent reliability. MasterCard advances global commerce through its family of brands, including MasterCard®, Maestro®, and Cirrus®; its suite of core products such as credit, debit, and prepaid; and its innovative platforms and functionalities, such as MasterCard PayPass™ and MasterCard inControl®. MasterCard serves consumers, governments, and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. For more information, please visit us at www.mastercard.com. Follow us on Twitter: @mastercardnews.

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Contacts:

Nicky James, Tribeca Public Relations, nickyj@tribecapr.co.za, 011 208 5527

Birgit Deibele, Tribeca Public Relations, birgitd@tribecapr.co.za, 011 208 5529

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[1] *Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bc.html

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