Mastercard Targeting Southeast Asia, Latin America Expansion

After Mastercard pulled out of Russia in March and was banned from issuing new cards in India last year, the company sees Southeast Asia and Latin America as targets for growth, company Co-President for International Markets Ling Hai told the Reuters Global Markets Forum Thursday (May 26).

“Southeast Asia is exciting (due to) the right demographics, the adoption of technology and digitisation, and governments’ focus on financial inclusion,” said Hai, adding that countries in the area would benefit with supply chains moving away from China.

Last year, India’s central bank banned Mastercard because it was considered “non-compliant” with the country’s 2018 rules that required foreign card networks to store Indian payments data locally for “unfettered supervisory access,” the Reuters report said.

“Our sense is we are getting really close to a resolution,” said Hai on the India ban, adding that the company was working “very constructively” with the Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Hai added that Mastercard would comply with India’s local data storage rules and to become “100% compliant.”

“Anything we need to localize in India, we are taking tangible steps to get there,” he said.

Mastercard suspended its operations in Russia after it launched an invasion of Ukraine this spring.

Mastercard will “work towards changing them together with other stakeholders in the ecosystem, including the government themselves” if an opportunity arose to improve rules and regulations in areas such as financial inclusion, sustainability and data privacy in Russia, said Hai.

The payment network company is also focused on “high-growth parts of the business,” including business-to-business payments flows, telecommunications and retail.

Related: Mastercard Brings Financial Inclusion Offering to Central America

Earlier this month, Mastercard debuted a financial inclusion program in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that will “accelerate the company’s objective of including five million unbanked individuals and digitize and provide credit access to one million micro and small businesses (MSMBs)” in the next five years.

The new program is part of Mastercard’s work with the Partnership for Central America and will include a $100 million investment to accelerate digital financial services in the three countries, where about 60% of adults don’t have bank accounts.