Mastercard plans to invest $1 billion (around Rs 7000 crore) in India over the course of five years, in projects including an India-based payment processing center. This will be in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s directive of storing payments data locally. This processing center is expected to open in another 18 months, generating employment for 1000 people. This will be Mastercard’s first such processing center outside of the US and could service its business units in Southeast Asia and APAC. Mastercard said the center is likely to be located in Pune and it will handle multiple tasks such as circuit switching for ATMs, PoS, eCommerce transactions, fraud mitigation, tokenization and authentication. Mastercard’s division president for South Asia Porush Singh said this global technological node will not only be doing authorization and processing, it will bring other value-added services as well. Mastercard is expected to invest the remaining amount in expanding its team that services its overseas operations and grow locally.
