Mastercard bets on fintech startups in India

Hyderabad: Mastercard, a US-based technology company in the global payments industry,on Thursday said it would partner with fintech startups through its India Investment Fund. The company had lined up $1 billion (nearly Rs 7,000 crore) investment in India and a part of that would be funneled into financial technology (fintech) startups.

Under the India Investment Fund, the first fintech startup to receive support was Hyderabad-based Syntizen, in December 2018. The company is looking at three more startups from the City of Pearls as the startup ecosystem in the city is expanding with every passing day, according to Rajeev Kumar,Senior Vice-President, Market Development for South Asia, Mastercard.

Apart from investing in startups, the company will also ramp up Indian operations. Further, it will double the headcount in the country to 4,000 in next five years from the current 2,000. "In 2013, the total staff of Mastercard in India was 29 people. Today, we have 2,000. This 2,000 represents 14 per cent of Mastercard's global strength.

At present, if you check our webpage, there are around 200 job requirements posted for technical experts," Rajiv Kumar told the media here on Thursday. Betting big on the growth of Indian digital payments market, Mastercard already invested $1 billion in last five years.

Kumar said that one-third of the freshly announced investment of $1 billion will go into stepping up their on-soil processing capability at Pune. Mastercard has already started the processing in its Pune facility during October last year, the first to be set up outside USA.