With Silicon Valley threatening to eat its lunch, MasterCard is hoping to bring a little startup cool to its headquarters by inviting staffers to ditch their suits for jeans and sneakers.
As Apple, Google, Facebook and a host of smaller rivals sniff around the payments sector, MasterCard has been at pains in recent times to stress that it is more of a technology than financial services firm. Only last month it significantly strengthened its team at its Silicon Valley outpost.
In its latest wheeze, the card giant has tweaked the dress code at its Purchase, NY, HQ to "relaxed business casual". This, explains worldwide communications team member Brittany Berliner, is "MasterCard’s next step towards establishing itself as inherently 'techy'".
It's not just the clothing that is getting more relaxed, the company has also built a games room packed with Xboxs, basketball hoops and ping pong tables.
Berliner claims that adopting a tech hub culture sparks innovation and creativity, while also helping to eliminate the generational gap between management and millennial staffers.
"You’ll often find men and women of all ages riding scooters around the office to make it to meetings on time. Watching executives challenge college hires to a game of basketball, ping pong, or foosball has also been pretty priceless," she writes.