MasterCard Focuses On Analytics With Mu Sigma Agreement

MasterCard Advisors, a division of MasterCard, and Mu Sigma, a decision sciences and analytics firm, have announced a new partnership that will combine the former’s purchase behavior insights with the latter’s advanced analytics.

As part of the deal, MasterCard has acquired an equity stake in Mu Sigma, although terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Mu Sigma and MasterCard are going to work together in a few ways,” said Gary Kearns, executive vice president, information services for MasterCard Advisors. “Were going to jointly develop products, so we’re going to look at the analytics, the insights that we have, the expertise that Mu Sigma brings, were going to develop products together, going to try to enhance and look to enhance the innovations that we’re bringing to the marketplace.”

According to a press release issued by MasterCard, the Big Data analytics market stood at over $5 billion in 2012 and is expected to reach $50 billion within five years. Mu Sigma is a company consisted of more than 2,500 “decision science professionals” that help to analyze data for many industries, such as the healthcare, financial services, insurance, consumer packaged goods and retail sectors.

“We’ll work with Mu Sigma to identify how our analytics or insights can help these other sectors to address these challenges and understanding their customers and better manage and growing their businesses,” Kearns noted.

By combining MasterCard’s “anonymous purchase behavior insights” with Mu Sigma’s analytical abilities Kearns said he believes the two companies will be able to assist each other’s clients in a variety of different verticals.

“Were going to work with current Mu Sigma clients and to bring MasterCard data analysis to those clients. Were also going to do the same thing where we look at our client base, whether it’s issuers or merchants or governments and where MS expertise can help us to enhance relationships,” Kearns noted.

“We believe that MasterCard and Mu Sigma together can do great things.”

To read more about MasterCard’s new partnership with Mu Sigma, click here.