Mastercard – Company Overview, History, Products

Mastercard Inc. is one of the most popular American multinational technology companies that specializes in financial services and transactions across the internet. Mastercard is known worldwide for its debit cards, credit cards, and prepaid cards used to make purchases and transactions all over the world. Mastercard currently employs more than 25000 employees and it is currently headquartered in New York. Mastercard is one of the popular payment services just like Visa that allows making transactions between a group of merchants and traders within a business.

The President and CEO of Mastercard is Michael Miebach. In the financial year 2021, Mastercard generated total revenue of more than 19 billion dollars. Mastercard currently has a market capitalization of more than 370 billion dollars. Mastercard is available for payments and services all over the world but recently Mastercard pulled out its services from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine.

Mastercard is known for its credit cards and payment systems which include Maestro, Cirrus, Mondex, Mastercard, and MasterPass.

History of Mastercard:

Mastercard Inc was initially launched in 1966 under the name of Interbank Card Association. The Interbank Card Association was formed by the Vice President of multiple banks led by Karl H. Hinke of Marine Midland Bank. This association was formed as result to compete with the Bank of America which was using its large profits to remove its competition from credit card service.

Later on, it became “Master Charge: The Interbank Card” in 1969. The interbank card association (ICA) later on, formed a strategic alliance with popular European credit cards like Eurocard to be accepted on their ICA network. Then the Access Credit Card system from the UK also joined hands with ICA in 1972. By 1979, the name of ICA was changed to Mastercard.

In 1983, Mastercard became one of the first financial companies to be able to use hologram technology on their credit card security system. Later in the 2000s, Mastercard international officially merged with European International which was a larger European credit card company to make transactions on a global level.

Mastercard also filed for its IPO in 2006 for a share price of $39. Mastercard has acquired multiple companies like DataCash which is a transaction processing and fraud checking application, Pinpoint which is a consumer rewards point managing company, and Brighterion which is an investment portfolio company that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Mastercard also collaborated with Apple to create a new mobile wallet for iPhone and Apple watch using Mastercard credit cards. In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mastercard officially stopped all its business operations in Russia. It has also allowed users to purchase NFTs through their credit cards.

Mastercard Inc. – Products and Services:

The various products & services by MasterCard are as follows:

Credit Cards – The main revenue model for Mastercard includes its credit cards which have a variety of tiers with a bunch of benefits with them. These credit cards include standard, gold, titanium, platinum, World, and World Elite.

Debit Cards – Mastercard is also known for its prepaid debit cards that even allow electronic transactions by users who don’t have any bank accounts as well.

Payment Systems – Mastercard payment systems help users to make financial transactions to transfer monetary currency.

Wrapping Up:

Hence, Mastercard is one of the largest financial services companies that specialize in credit cards, debit cards, and payment systems to settle down financial transactions. The tagline of Mastercard is “There are some things money can’t buy, For everything else, there is a Mastercard.”