How Mastercard uses their innovation lab to co-create with their customers

Posted by Mike Walsh

Oct 1, 2020 1:58:41 AM

KEN MOORE

 

Despite all the talk about fintech disruption - banking, finance, and payments remain highly regulated industries with well-established competitors who are not standing still - even in this moment of rapid change and digital reinvention. Mastercard is one such company. They created Mastercard Labs as a way of co-creating and innovating with their customers. The idea was to turn external signals into opportunities, and in' doing so, de-risk' them for their clients and for the rest of the organization. So, for example, they are working on quantum computing with IBM. They have established their own proprietary blockchain and several AI projects and were behind the Apple Card's tokenization, which allowed it to work without the standard 16 digits.

 

To learn more about how Mastercard manages their innovation portfolio, I spoke with Ken Moore, who is the Chief Innovation Officer at Mastercard and also Head of Mastercard Labs. Ken is responsible for the company's R&D initiatives globally. Prior to joining Mastercard, he was a Director at Citibank, where he established Citi's first Innovation Lab and subsequently expanded it globally to create a network of collaborative innovation centers across the company.

 

 

In this episode, you will learn:

 

0:00 How the pandemic has changed consumer behavior

3:00 Why Mastercard needed an innovation lab

10:16 The importance of de-risking innovation

13:51 How to use innovation portfolios

21:14 The future customer journey

26:49 Engaging the startup community

29:38 Learning from the Chinese payments ecosystem

33:07 Mastercard’s 7 innovation portfolios

 

CATEGORY: Finance

The future of algorithmic investing

Posted by Mike Walsh

May 8, 2018 1:31:25 PM

Manoj Narang

 

Manoj Narang is one of the world’s leading thinkers, and provocateurs, when it comes to the future of investing. A proponent of high frequency trading, he previously founded Tradeworx before setting up electronic trading and asset manager Mana Partners, with a $1 billion under management. What makes Mana interesting, especially for my research on algorithmic leadership, is Manoj’s vision for tomorrow’s investment manager, is super smart humans augmented by smart AI. When I caught up with him in NYC, he gave me a master class in the secret structures of the investment markets, and how they will be shaped and influenced by machine learning and algorithms.

 

CATEGORY: Finance, Leadership

How to build an AI financial advisor

Posted by Mike Walsh

Apr 22, 2018 1:44:49 PM

Ramya Joseph

 

Recently named Founder of the Year by Benzinga, Ramya Joseph is a former banker that combined her knowledge of investment management and machine learning, to create Pefin, the world’s first AI financial advisor. Pefin, which won the People's Choice Award at SXSW in the interactive innovation category, is a neural network which starts with the user’s current finances and projects how they will change over time with market conditions, inflation, taxes, government rules, and the user’s plans. I caught up with Ramya at her company's HQ in New York, where we spoke about the future of algorithmic financial advice, and also what kinds of people AI-first organizations need to hire in order to succeed.

 

CATEGORY: Innovation, Finance