Mastercard

Mastercard Inc. is an American multinational payment card services corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York. It offers a range of payment transaction processing and other related-payment services. Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card-issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the Mastercard-brand debit, credit and prepaid cards to make purchases. Mastercard has been publicly traded since 2006.
Mastercard was created by an alliance of several banks and regional bankcard associations in response to the BankAmericard issued by Bank of America, which later became Visa and is still its biggest competitor. Along with Visa, Mastercard has faced numerous antitrust lawsuits. Prior to its initial public offering, Mastercard Worldwide was a cooperative owned by the more than 25,000 financial institutions that issue its branded cards.

History

Although BankAmericard's debut in September 1958 was a disaster, it began to turn a profit by May 1961. Bank of America deliberately kept this information secret and allowed then-widespread negative impressions to linger in order to ward off competition. This strategy was successful until 1966, when BankAmericard's profitability had become far too big to hide. From 1960 to 1966, there were only 10 new credit cards introduced in the United States, but from 1966 to 1968, approximately 440 credit cards were introduced by banks large and small throughout the country. These newcomers promptly banded together into regional bankcard associations.
One reason why most banks chose to join forces was that at the time, 16 states limited the ability of banks to operate through branch locations, while 15 states entirely prohibited branch banking and required unit banking. A unit bank can legally operate only at a single site and is thereby forced to remain very small. By joining a regional bankcard association, a unit bank could quickly add a credit card to its lineup of financial products, and achieve economies of scale by outsourcing tedious back office tasks like card servicing to the association. Such associations also enabled unit banks to aggregate their customer bases and merchant networks in order to make a credit card useful for both customers and merchants; early credit cards had failed because they could only be used within a small radius around their respective issuing banks.
In 1966, Karl H. Hinke, an executive vice president at Marine Midland Bank, asked representatives of several other banks to meet him in Buffalo, New York. Marine Midland had just launched its own regional bankcard in the Upstate New York market after Bank of America declined its request for a BankAmericard regional license because Marine Midland was too big. The result of the Buffalo meeting was that several banks and regional bankcard associations soon agreed to join forces as Interbankard, Inc., which then became the Interbank Card Association. By the end of 1967, ICA had 150 members and Hinke became ICA's chairman. Bank of America eventually joined Mastercard as well..
The Interbank branding in 1966 initially consisted only of a small unobtrusive lowercase i inside a circle in the lower right-hand corner of the front of each Interbank card; the rest of the card design was the prerogative of each issuing bank. This tiny logo proved to be entirely unsatisfactory for creating nationwide brand awareness in order to compete against the established leader, BankAmericard. In 1969, Interbank developed a new national brand, "Master Charge: The Interbank Card" by combining the two overlapping yellow and orange circles of the Western States Bankcard Association with the "Master Charge" name coined by the First National Bank of Louisville, Kentucky.
That same year, First National City Bank joined Interbank and merged its proprietary Everything Card program with Master Charge.
In 1968, the ICA and Eurocard started a strategic alliance, which effectively allowed the ICA access to the European market, and for Eurocard to be accepted on the ICA network. The Access card system from the United Kingdom joined the ICA/Eurocard alliance in 1972.
In 1979, Master Charge: The Interbank Card was renamed MasterCard. Beginning in 1980 the company rolled out new cards with a refreshed logo. Cards retained the overlapping red and yellow circles first adopted in 1969; subsequent card designs have continued to use this motif.
In 1983, Mastercard International Inc. became the first bank to use holograms as part of their card security. They acquired the Cirrus network of automated tellers in 1985.
In 1997, Mastercard took over the Access card; the Access brand was then retired. In 2002, MasterCard International merged with Europay International, another large credit-card issuer association, of which Eurocard had become a part in 1992. Mastercard became a Delaware corporation in connection with the merger, as well as in anticipation of an IPO.
The company, which had been organized as a cooperative of banks, had an initial public offering on May 25, 2006, selling 95.5 million shares at $39 each. The stock is traded on the NYSE under the symbol MA, with a market capitalization of $434 billion as of April 2024. The deal was designed to maintain the value of the brand and minimise regulatory costs.
In August 2010, Mastercard Worldwide, as it had been rebranded, expanded its e-commerce offering with the acquisition of DataCash, a UK-based payment processing and fraud/risk management provider. In March 2012, Mastercard announced the expansion of its mobile contactless payments program, including markets across the Middle East.
In spring 2014, Mastercard acquired Australia's leading rewards program manager company Pinpoint for an undisclosed amount. In July 2016, Mastercard acquired 92.4% of VocaLink, a British company, for $920 million. In August 2017, Mastercard acquired Brighterion, a company with a portfolio of intellectual property in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Brighterion holds several patents.
In August 2019, Mastercard launched an offer to acquire part of the operations of Nets, a Scandinavian company, for €2.85 billion.
In April 2021, Mastercard created a calculator that gathers information and measures the carbon footprints of the customers in order to help them know how much they are contributing in carbon emissions and global warming. The same month, Mastercard announced the acquisition of Ekata, a company specializing in identity verification, for $850 million.
In March 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mastercard announced that it would suspend all business operations in Russia.
On November 17, 2023, the Chinese government approved the local bank card clearing license for the joint venture established by Mastercard in China. As of May 9, 2024, the joint venture can issue Mastercard bank cards that use the Chinese yuan for payment.
In September 2024, Mastercard acquired cybersecurity company Recorded Future for $2.65 billion.
In January 2026, Mastercard launched an Agentic AI suite called the Mastercard Agent Suite to help banks, retailers and other enterprises build, test, and deploy autonomous AI-driven workflows and agents for business operations. It is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2026.

Biometric metal card

In mid-2025, Mastercard formalized the rollout of biometric-enabled metal credit cards built on the IDEX Pay platform. In February 2025, South Korean manufacturer KONA I received a Letter of Approval from Mastercard to produce both biometric plastic and metal cards. These cards embed a fingerprint sensor within the card’s secure chip, enabling cardholder authentication directly on the card for in‑store EMV PIN‑free transactions, while ensuring biometric data never leaves the card.
In July 2025, Eastern Bank PLC in Bangladesh, in partnership with Mastercard, unveiled the world’s first commercially issued biometric metal credit card under the “World Elite” tier. The launch took place on 5 July 2025 in Dhaka, co-sponsored by IDEX Biometrics, KONA I, and Infineon Technologies. The card allows fingerprint authentication for EMV transactions, supports contact and contactless payments, and is issued as part of Mastercard’s Priceless Specials programme.
Mastercard’s global FAQ indicates biometric payment cards have been issued in over 70 markets, integrate with standard EMV terminals and ATMs, require no new infrastructure, and support user self‑enrollment kits.

Finances

Year	Revenue	Operating income	Share price	Employees
2005	2,938	393		4,300
2006	3,326	229	6.20	4,600
2007	4,068	1,108	13.65	5,000
2008	4,992	−534	20.33	5,500
2009	5,099	2,260	17.99	5,100
2010	5,539	2,752	22.01	5,600
2011	6,714	2,713	28.73	6,700
2012	7,391	3,937	41.58	7,500
2013	8,312	4,503	59.34	8,200
2014	9,441	5,106	75.33	10,300
2015	9,667	5,078	90.62	11,300
2016	10,776	5,761	94.50	11,900
2017	12,497	6,622	126.54	13,400
2018	14,950	7,282	186.16	14,800
2019	16,883	9,664	300.74	18,600
2020	15,301	8,081	370.00	21,000
2021	18,884	10,082	354.83	24,000
2022	22,237	12,264	347.73	29,900
2023	25,098	14,008	422.17	33,400
2024	28,167	15,582	524.23	35,300

As of 2024, Mastercard ranked 164 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.