Mastercard Inc.

Mastercard Inc. is an international payment card services corporation established in 1966. It provides various financial services in more than 210 countries and territories, and its branded credit cards and debit cards are accepted by more than 37 million businesses worldwide. The company is headquartered in Purchase, New York, with 33,400 employees worldwide. It became a publicly traded company in 2006.

Founding and early growth

The company that would become Mastercard Inc. was conceived in 1966 when a consortium of banks met in Buffalo, New York, at the invitation of Karl H. Hinke, a vice president at Marine Midland Bank, to discuss banding together to offer credit card services. It was a sound idea spurred by reports regarding the strong growth of Bank of America’s BankAmericard, which would eventually become Visa Inc. The Buffalo meeting established the Interbank Card Association (ICA). Within a year, the ICA had 150 members, and Hinke was named chair.

National branding was an issue at the concept’s beginning because each issuing bank had a say in its card design. In 1969, the ICA unveiled Master Charge: The Interbank Card, with a logo of overlapping orange and yellow circles. Also in 1969, New York City–based First National City Bank (now Citibank) added its Everything Card to the Master Charge family, expanding Master Charge’s national reach. A decade later, Master Charge: The Interbank Card was rechristened Mastercard.

International expansion

The ICA expanded outside the U.S. in 1968 by partnering with Eurocard. This gave the ICA inroads into the European market and equally benefited Eurocard, which gained access to the ICA network. That same year, the ICA allied with Mexico’s Banco Nacional and a handful of institutions in Japan.

The United Kingdom’s popular Access card joined the consortium in 1972; that brand name was discontinued in 1997 when it was assimilated by Mastercard. The ICA continued to expand internationally, and in the late 1970s, renamed itself Mastercard International. In the 1980s, Mastercard made important inroads in Asia and South America and became the first payment card issuer in the People’s Republic of China.

Further international expansion occurred in 2002 when Mastercard International merged with credit card issuer Europay International, which had assumed Eurocard a decade earlier. Mastercard International changed its name to Mastercard Worldwide in 2006 and adopted a new logo.

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Acquisitions, mergers, and more

Mastercard Inc. has expanded its reach and capability through mergers, acquisitions, and new products, including:

• Cirrus, a large ATM network, acquired in 1985.
• Maestro, the first point-of-sale debit network, established by Mastercard in 1991.
• DataCash, a British payment processing and risk management company that allowed Mastercard to expand further into e-commerce, purchased in 2010.
• Orbiscom, an Ireland-based payments solutions software provider, renamed Mastercard Labs, acquired in 2009.
• Provus, a processing company based in Turkey, acquired in 2013.
• Travelex, a large foreign exchange provider that joined forces with Mastercard and Access Prepaid in 2013 to offer the Multi-currency Cash Passport prepaid Mastercard.
• Pinpoint, an Australian rewards program manager, acquired in 2014.
• Brighterion, a San Francisco–based provider of artificial intelligence (AI) and related software, purchased in 2017.
• Cyber Front, a cyberattack simulation and assessment program that helps businesses protect against cybercrime, launched in 2022.

Controversies and legal actions

Mastercard has faced several controversies and legal actions, including two significant antitrust class-action lawsuits. In the first, filed in 1996 on behalf of 12 million retailers, Mastercard and Visa were alleged to have unlawfully fixed fees for credit and debit card transactions. The suit wound through the courts for several years, and in March 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan upheld a $5.6 billion settlement initially approved in 2019.

The second suit, brought by the National ATM Council in 2011, alleged that Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo established agreements with U.S. banks that violated antitrust laws by preventing independent automated teller machine (ATM) operators from setting lower access fees. This case also took years to wind through the legal system.

A $66.7 million settlement was reached in 2020, but appeals by Visa and Mastercard regarding class certification kept the case in the courts. In September 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against the companies and ordered the case to trial. In April 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Visa and Mastercard to review the Court of Appeals decision, allowing the class-action lawsuit to proceed.

Mastercard faced scrutiny in 2018 when media outlets reported that Google had paid Mastercard several million dollars for select user data, which it intended to use in its advertising. The report took Mastercard users by surprise because the sale of their data had not been publicly announced.

Cryptocurrencies

In February 2021, Mastercard jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, announcing that it would soon support certain cryptocurrencies and allow them to be used for payments. In October 2021, the company established a partnership with Bakkt, an Alpharetta, Georgia-based cryptocurrency management and security company, that would allow any member bank or merchant to offer cryptocurrency services.

In October 2022, Mastercard partnered with Paxos, a cryptocurrency trading system, to establish Crypto Source, a program allowing member financial institutions to provide cryptocurrency trading to their clients.

Legacy

Mastercard was established by a group of banks eager to break into the burgeoning national credit card market. It found success through various popular financial services, savvy mergers and acquisitions, and global expansion. Today, the company is the second largest card issuer, behind Visa, with an estimated 1.03 billion credit cards and 1.55 billion debit cards in circulation worldwide, and annual revenue of $14.43 billion as of 2023.