Global payments giant MasterCard plans to significantly expand its consulting arm, MasterCard Data & Services, in Azerbaijan this year.
Headquartered in New York, Mastercard Data & Services is the management and data consulting arm of Mastercard, one of the world's largest payments companies. The company's 3,000 consultants around the world help financial institutions, retailers, carriers, travel groups and other businesses realize payment solutions.
At a press conference held last week, Mehmet Gurez, head of business development for Mastercard Data & Services in Turkey and Azerbaijan, revealed that the company plans to increase its presence in Azerbaijan. .
Gules, who was a partner at EY before joining Mastercard Data & Services, said the consulting firm already has a strong presence in Azerbaijan. “We are currently providing consulting services to eight of Azerbaijan's top banks and are also cooperating with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan.”
“We are seeing an increase in client demand,” Gules continued. “As a result, we have decided to step up our investments and establish local operations in 2024. The new team will initially serve Azerbaijani clients; ” will expand its reach to surrounding countries in the coming years. ”
Located between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, Azerbaijan is based at the crossroads of Asia and Europe. Neighboring countries include Georgia, Armenia, Russia, and Iran.
broader push
The local expansion of Mastercard Data & Services is part of Mastercard's broader push into the Azerbaijani market. At the same press conference, Mastercard's Azerbaijan regional manager Emil Zeinarov said the company is dedicated to helping the local payments industry take the next step in professionalization.
“One of our priorities is to increase the number of NFC devices. NFC devices are very popular with everyone. You use these services on social media and all of our The campaign aims to expand on this. We are also investing in tokenization by running more campaigns promoting NFC payments and adding more banks to our ApplePay and Google Pay services. “We plan to continue,” he said.
“We are also prioritizing further expanding the reach of Masterpass technology by partnering with banks and launching integrations with their mobile apps.”