Global card payments brand Mastercard has announced its plan of investing $1 billion in India operations over the period of next five years. About $350 million of the total amount would be invested in setting up of a local payments processing centre as per the Reserve Bank of India’s mandate to store all payments data locally.
This is the first such processing centre of the company outside of the US and could provide service markets such as Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific.
Porush Singh, division president for south Asia, Mastercard, said, “This isn’t just a basic node that does authorisation and processing — we will bring in many other value-added services. These capabilities will keep evolving over time and we will look at other markets we can service out of here.”
The company is also expected to invest the remaining amount to grow locally and to expand the team that services its overseas operations. The processing centre which is expected to open in another 18 months is expected to create employment for additional 1,000 people.
“We’re going to be investing in both technology and people and already have centers in Gurugram, Vadodara and Pune. Because of the kind of capabilities we are deploying, this time, a large chunk of that value is going to be in India itself, and that’s why we’re looking at how we can deploy it across multiple markets in the region,” Singh said.
