Mastercard sets up its first Innovation Lab in India

Mastercard launched its first innovation lab in India on Tuesday to work alongside the local fintech industry on future technology breakthroughs in digital payments, data manipulation, financial inclusion and fraud prevention.

“Learning, innovation, and collaboration cannot exist in isolation. The launch of the first Mastercard Labs in India is evidence of our commitment to designing solutions that drive commerce and create more inclusive societies around the world," said Ken Moore, EVP, Mastercard Labs.

Set up in Pune, Mastercard Labs is the ninth such lab for the company globally and and the second in Asia Pacific, following Singapore. The new lab will not only operate as an incubation hub for experimenting with new technologies but also act as a support base for startup partnerships through the card scheme's Start Path programme. It will also focus on collaboration and co-creation with academia, fintech experts, technologists and developers based in India.

“The Mastercard Labs in India provides a significant opportunity to highlight the country’s standing as a world-class innovation hub, renowned for its entrepreneurial spirit and growing pool of science, technology, engineering and mathematics talent. By establishing the new lab in Pune, we are looking to deepen our active collaborations with governments, issuers and businesses in India and revolutionise the market’s digital payments ecosystem to drive greater acceptance and adoption of electronic payments, not just in India but around the world,” said Tobias Puehse, Vice President, Innovation Management, Digital Payments and Labs, Asia Pacific, Mastercard.

Mastercard Labs in India is one of several broad-based collaborations Mastercard has launched India and the wider Asia Pacific region. This year, Mastercard co-innovated with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and other payments brands to develop Bharat QR, the world’s first interoperable Quick Response (QR) code acceptance solution, as part of a national push to streamline local electronic payments infrastructure.