Finance Marketing Summit: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ – Mastercard’s masterplan for winning business through inclusion
“When you think about MasterCard, you think about MasterCard as a credit card company. We’re actually also a technology company.”
Julie Nestor, the executive vice president, head of marketing and communications, Asia Pacific Mastercard, delivered a CMO masterclass at Mumbrella’s Finance Marketing Summit in Sydney on Thursday, where she explained to the audience how “as well as being the network for credit, debit and prepaid cards across the world, we also power most of Australia’s loyalty programs”.
“We create global digital identity networks for companies all over the world,” she said.
“We even provide digital tools for farmers in remote places in India to allow them to produce and trade”.
With over two billion cardholders, Mastercard have a lot of access to a lot of data, which, Nestor explains, give the company a great opportunity to influence public sector to drive inclusion.
“I think you all know that consumers are starting to push harder and expect more from brands when it comes to doing the right thing, and we may not yet see that translate into purchase decisions.
“People still might buy from brands that aren’t doing the right thing, but increasingly the younger generations are coming on board.
“They’re expecting more from us, and that’s why we’re kind of in this game of inclusivity. It’s very altruistic in its nature, but we can also drive very new growth through it.”
Nestor explains how “financial inclusion” is “the single most important thing that we at MasterCard can do to make the world a better place and to help everybody prosper.”
Westpac calls this strategy “doing well by doing good.”
“We believe in creating a more inclusive and sustainable world where the digital economy works for everyone, everywhere, — and of course it’s easier said than done — but it really has required a push from the top.
“It’s not just one single person, and our CEO committed to that over 10 years ago when they created a group called the Centre for Inclusive Growth, which is a central group that works across the world with government, with charities, and with the private sector to identify opportunities for a company like MasterCard to drive more prosperous opportunities for people everywhere and to help bring people into the digital economy.”
“I think it’s important – we always understand that culture eats strategy for breakfast. You have to have the culture. It has to be driven from the top, and that’s what we have in the Centre for Inclusive Growth.”
The Centre for Inclusive Growth set a goal to connect one billion people to the digital economy by 2025, including 50 million small businesses and 25 million women entrepreneurs.
“We take this goal very seriously,” Nestor said. “We have a third-party who tracks our performance across this, and we have a very robust criteria around what it actually looks like, and from an employee point of view, we are also remunerated on this, not just our executives, but every single one of our employees.
“If we don’t meet the goals that we’re setting up for D&I and ESG admissions, a component of our compensation will be impacted, and so that really drives everyone in the organisation to get behind this, and we also have pledges in each of the regions where we pledge as a region to focus on doing something good, and in Asia, for example, we’re focused on including people with disabilities.”
Nestor said the first way to do this is through product design.
“How do we actually create products that drive inclusivity? And so when we talk about the importance of ROI, for MasterCard over time. Every time you use your MasterCard, and I’m sure you’re all MasterCard users, we make money.
“So that’s the KPI. The more cards that we issue, the more revenue we’re going to make. So we can do that in a good way.
“We can create cards that are truly inclusive but still actually make revenue from it.”
Mastercard looks at creating products that resolve friction and pain points that consumers are experiencing while bringing people into the financial ecosystem in a more inclusive way. These include ‘touch cards’ for vision impairs customers, and an initiative named ‘True Name’ that came from a consumer insight “that people who are transgender can get discriminated at the point of making a payment, if their card has a name on it that doesn’t represent who they are.”
Nestor calls these examples of doing well by doing good.
“We’re actually growing the number of bank partners that want these cards. We’re winning new business.”
To watch this session recording and more from the Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit, head to Mumbrella Pro.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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