Mastercard announces deepening commitment to Myanmar

By Edil Corneille

Today, Mastercard announced that it is deepening its commitment to Myanmar by establishing a local office presence in Yangon and appointing a country business development manager. The global payments company aims to support the advancement of the country’s digital payments ecosystem and its efforts to build a futuristic and inclusive cashless society. The establishment of the local office is said to underscore Mastercard’s long-term commitment to advancing Myanmar’s national digital agenda and reflects the company’s continued confidence in the market.

“With its futuristic vision to enable sophisticated capabilities like real-time payments for its citizens and businesses, Myanmar is at a truly pivotal stage in its economic evolution. Mastercard has a long and established history in partnering with hundreds of nations around the world on growing and scaling their payments ecosystems. Mastercard’s ambition for Myanmar is no different – the organization is focused on bringing its global best practices, coupled with a deeply rooted local presence and understanding of the domestic environment, to bear, to help the country secure a digital future defined by efficiency, agility, and security,” said Safdar Khan, Division President, Southeast Asia Emerging Markets, Mastercard.

“As Myanmar continues its digital transformation, it is also necessary to empower its people with the skill sets and knowledge they need to participate actively in the digital economy. Mastercard will bring to Myanmar decades of experience in technology skilling that will enable the country to accelerate human capital development. Furthermore, as part of the organization’s commitment to grow the local talent pool, Mastercard is well on its way to assembling a local team which will lead the local efforts and facilitate Mastercard’s objective for sustainable, domestically relevant, long-term success,” he added.

Mastercard has been working for nearly a decade, with government and key stakeholders in Myanmar, to digitalize its payments environment, achieving a number of critical firsts and milestones, including that of being the first international payments network to issue a license to a local bank (Co-Operative Bank Limited), paving the way for Mastercard cards to be issued and accepted in the country.

Furthermore, Mastercard has reduced the month-long national SME registration process to one day by launching the MSME Webportal, an e-government web portal, in partnership with CB Bank and the Myanmar government. The company stated that it issued Myanmar’s first credit card designed exclusively for women, MAB Lady’s, in partnership with Myanmar Apex Bank. Another partnership with Yoma Bank ensured the digitalization and tailoring of products and solutions for the bank’s customers, including SMEs. Moreover, exclusive offers for all Mastercard cardholders have been curated until 2021 in celebration of Mastercard’s 8th year in Myanmar.

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