Mastercard has opened its first innovation lab in India to work side-by-side with the local financial community on future technology breakthroughs in digital payments, data manipulation, financial inclusion and fraud prevention.
Mastercard Labs in India is the company’s ninth lab in the world and the second in Asia Pacific, following Singapore. Based in Pune, the new lab will operate as an incubation hub for experimenting with new technologies and act as a support base for startup partnerships through the card scheme's Start Path programme.
The opening of the lab follows a previous project conducted with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and other payments brands to develop Bharat QR, an interoperable Quick Response (QR) code acceptance system, as part of a national push to streamline local electronic payments infrastructure.
Tobias Puehse, VP, innovation management, digital payments and labs, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, says: “By establishing the new lab in Pune, we are looking to deepen our active collaborations with governments, issuers and businesses in India and revolutionize the market’s digital payments ecosystem to drive greater acceptance and adoption of electronic payments, not just in India but around the world.”