Mastercard swipes $1 billion to make India its technology hub and promises 1,000 jobs

• Global payments company Mastercard plans to invest $1 billion in India, according to reports.
• The company will set up its ‘global technology node’ in India which will create 1,000 jobs.
• Mastercard is putting away $350 million to store data locally in India.

India is soon becoming the centre of all things technology and innovation for globally renowned companies. Now, payments company Mastercard too plans to invest $1 billion and make India the platform for its tech innovations.

Given India’s fast-growing digital payments space, global giants like Facebook and Google have introduced their payments app in India first. Facebook with WhatsApp Pay and Google with Google Pay (previously called Tez) took an India-first approach when it comes to payments. Integrated technology platforms like Poynt too are looking at entering the Indian market.

Mastercard, already a global leader for payments, now wants a piece of the pie. According to reports, Mastercard is looking to establish its global technology node in India, which will also make way for over 1,000 jobs.

“Over the last five years, we invested about $1 billion in India. Given our increasing confidence in the Indian economy, where it is likely to be over the coming decade, we are stepping up on our investment commitment in India. We are committing another $1 billion into India (for the next five years),” said Ari Sarker, co-president, Asia-Pacific, Mastercard told the Hindu Business Line.

However, of the whopping $1 billion, about $350 million would go in setting up local data centres, according to the RBI's mandate for data localization, which mandates that data of Indian users should be stored in data centres that are located in India itself.

Given the number of global players entering the payments space, on April 2019, the RBI had said, “All system providers shall ensure that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India. This data should include the full end-to-end transaction details/information collected/carried/processed as part of the message/payment instruction.”

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