The business landscape is rapidly evolving today with technological advancement. The convergence of technologies like artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and big data analytics is enhancing the ability to make real-time decisions, capture streaming data and add value to consumers' interests. Mastercard is focused on building simple, safe, and smart digital solutions for its consumers keeping safety and security at the core of the business, and delivering better experiences across the globe. Analytics Insight is engaged in an exclusive interview with Rajesh Chopra, Senior Vice President, Data & Services, South Asia, Mastercard.

1. How is IoT/Big Data/AI/Robotics evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important trends that you see emerging across the globe?

The business landscape is rapidly evolving today with technological advancement. The convergence of technologies like artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and big data analytics is enhancing the ability to make real-time decisions, capture streaming data and add value to consumers' interests. Similarly, blockchain technology today is bringing the immense potential to businesses by making enterprise resource planning (ERPs) more secure. These emerging technologies are further pushing the boundaries of data processing and intelligent learning.

Emerging digital trends are shaping the future to provide more choice and convenience to the end consumers. Smart home appliances and AI-based virtual assistants are a few of many applications of growing IoT networks that provide consumers with convenience. Quantum and edge computing have also become much talked about subjects in the recent past, that will represent the next frontier of technology making a difference in consumers' everyday experiences through better and faster computational processing.

2. Please brief us about the products/services/solutions Mastercard provides to your customers and how do they get value out of it?

At Mastercard, we are focused on building simple, safe, and smart digital solutions for our consumers keeping safety and security at the core of the business and delivering better experiences across the globe. We leverage data to create personalized solutions; enable more intelligent decisions and drive predictive capabilities and provide customers across industries and geographies with various solutions to address the existing challenges in their businesses.

For instance, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we introduced Recovery Insights for enabling governments and businesses to take proactive decisions to tap into the economic recovery trends across the world. As open banking and open finance continue to grow in various forms around the world, they're bringing much-improved access to financial services and innovative services to people and businesses.

Our Spending Pulse solution helps customers gain market intelligence on consumer spending to answer key business questions such as performance, sales, consumer spending, and potential target.

There are numerous other ways how our carefully devised products, effective services and meaningful partnerships add value to our customers and subsequently, the end consumers' day-to-day lives.

3. Could you highlight Mastercard's recent innovations in the AI/ML/Analytics space?

To cite a few examples of Mastercard's recent work across new technologies, we recently launched a cyber intelligence center of excellence (COE) at Tech City, Guwahati in partnership with Assam Electronics Development Corporation Limited (AMTRON). Leveraging artificial intelligence, the Cyber COE is envisaged to provide intelligence services to the Government of India, state governments within India, Public Sector Undertakings ("PSUs") within India, and corporates within India, against the continuously growing and rapidly evolving cybersecurity threat landscape.

Another solution, Cyber Quant helps to depict the bigger picture before it turns into a problem. It measures organization's cybersecurity risks, flags security gaps, and estimates the impact of new cybersecurity controls on the business within an organization.

Additionally, our Acquirer Intelligence Center enables pre-defined analytics on portfolio performance across volume, fraud, and authorisation, compared to custom benchmarks for a full view of business performance and actionable insights. During the pandemic, we leveraged this expertise to help retailers, restaurants, consumer brands and many others navigate the challenges of the pandemic globally.

Globally, we launched ShopOpenings.com, an online search tool that allows consumers to confirm which stores and businesses are open to customers and if they accept contactless payments.

4. Would you like to highlight a few use cases where analytics has benefitted the organization tremendously?

Analytics is not only being used to address the requirements by our consumers but also supporting government and small businesses. For example: during the pandemic, we supported a global bank to understand how COVID-19 is impacting behavior across consumer segments, identifying business implications and developing concrete action plans. The real-time insights of their portfolio against market benchmarks were offered.

At certain geographies, our Data & Services team leveraged our proprietary tools – Test & Learn and Market Basket Analyzer modules to better target customers to spend online, optimize grocery store assortments, increase basket sizes and cluster customers for campaign targeting. We also leveraged these tools to provide recommendations to an international airline on how they can optimally structure fare pricing, purchase condition, and incentive to drive more membership for when capacity resumes.

Besides, we have been hosting and facilitating webinars and training sessions via Mastercard Academy on the Web (AOW) platform which our customers have free access to.

5. How C-suite executives can leverage data to deliver business value to their organizations without increasing cost and complexity?

Big data and analytics are helping refine and personalize financial products and services and enabling innovation in the digital financial ecosystem. Not just the financial services sector, data today plays a significant role in healthcare, manufacturing, and education among other industries. There are numerous examples of leveraging data effectively to deliver business value.

For example, Trading Commissions are using big data analytics to ensure that no illegal trading happens by monitoring the stock market. Similarly in the manufacturing sector, data is used to enhance supply chain and productivity, etc.

CXOs today are making use of real-time data and information to make better decisions that further help to drive stronger collaboration and teamwork; to handle the customer life cycle by predicting the next purchase of the customer to match the offerings accordingly; define the right security metrics and monitor them regularly that further prevents the organizations from data breaches and the loss incurred.

In fact, as per a February 2022 report by EY[1], almost 80% of the C-suite executives surveyed across verticals said they will increase their cloud budgets over the next twelve months to make hybrid working more convenient and secure.