Mastercard to double India headcount by 2024 following $1 bn investment

Global card payments major Mastercard which has announced an investment of $1 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in India in the next five years, Thursday said it expects the existing headcount to double during the same period in the country.

"In 2013, the total staff of Mastercard in India was 29 people. Today we are 2,000. All are highly technical qualified staff. This 2,000 represents 14 per cent of Mastercard's global strength. We continue to grow,  I believe so," Rajeev Kumar senior vice-president-market development, South Asia for Mastercard said at a press conference here.

"It (headcount) would easily double in the next 5 years. If you had to take the last  $1 billion investment (in India) for 2,000 people, we believe fresh investment of another $1 billion would easily add another 2,000 (employees)," he added.

Betting big on the growth of Indian digital payments market, Mastercard recently announced an investment of $1 billion over the next five years on increasing infrastructure.

The company has already invested $1 billion in the Indian market in the last five years.

Rajeev Kumar said one-third of the freshly announced investment will go into stepping up "on soil processing capabilities" at Pune.

As per recent RBI guidelines, data pertaining to Indians transacting in India should remain on Indian soil.

Mastercard has already stared "on soil processing" in in its Pune facility during October last year.

"This is the first time that we will be going out of USA for an on soil processing one. After USA this (India) will be the first time Mastercard is going to setup an on soil processing capability outside USA with end-to-end capability," the official said.

He also said over Rs 2,000 crore (part of $1 billion fresh investment) will be spent on setting up "Services Hub"  for value added services such as identification, tokenisation, security and analytics support.

"This will be for India and most probably for the rest of the world. Approximately one-third of the investment ($1 billion) or about $300 million will go into soil processing and an equal sum will go into services hub," he explained.

Quoting market reports, Rajeev Kumar said the total digital payments market in India is likely to touch $1 trillion by 2023.

According to him, there are nearly 991 million cards in India including 46 million credit cards.