Dublin hub for credit card giant

John Collins
Irish Times
June 4th 2010

Credit card giant Mastercard has established its global research and development hub in Dublin following last year’s acquisition of payments software firm Orbiscom.

“Mastercard Labs is a desire by Mastercard to recreate the Orbiscom approach on a wider basis,” said Gary Lyons, the former chief executive of Orbiscom, who has been appointed head of Mastercard Labs. “Orbiscom would be an innovative company who totally understands the importance of a flexible platform and getting technology quickly to customers.”

Mastercard’s incoming chief executive, Ajay Banga, has identified innovation as one of his three top priorities for the company.

Mr Lyons said the pace of innovation in payments is accelerating with new platforms such as smart phones, games consoles and social networks providing the ability to make payments.

“Big companies find it extremely difficult to innovate in new ecosystems, so new companies appear to fill the void,” explained Mr Lyons. “We need to innovate better and faster and make innovation part of our DNA.”

Mr Lyons said Mastercard has a strong brand and a secure global network designed to move money efficiently. Last week it announced that it will provide an open programming interface for third parties to access services on that network – the first initiative to come out of Mastercard Labs.

Set up in April with offices in Dublin, Singapore, New York and St Louis, Mastercard Labs will initially focus on e-commerce, mobile and peer to peer payments, according to Mr Lyons.

“We are actively looking to hire the best software developers in Ireland into Mastercard Labs now,” said Mr Lyons. The operation has 35 staff in Dublin but Mr Lyons declined to say how many positions it was seeking to fill.

Orbiscom developed a platform that allowed credit card holders to generate a unique credit card number that was only valid for a single transaction. Clients included Citi, Wells Fargo, Barclays and Bank of America, and Mastercard.

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