Director, North America Franchise Innovation

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Director, North America Franchise Innovation

The Franchise model is the cornerstone of Mastercard's success, fostering trust and confidence in our brand for nearly 60 years. It is the driving force behind our competitive edge, enabling global operations at scale and driving innovation in traditional carded payments as well as new payment flows. Through this powerful business model, we ensure that everyday hundreds of millions of consumers, merchants, and banks make, accept, and approve payments with complete peace of mind.

The Franchise team shapes the payments ecosystem by establishing principles and foundational standards, onboarding new participants, enabling disputes processes, and ensuring the safety and integrity of our network, all while driving innovative concepts. Franchise is committed to ensuring the continued growth of Mastercard and the long-term health of the payments ecosystem.

The Director, North America Franchise Innovation will be a key contributor with significant responsibilities focusing on innovative solutions to support the North America region where customers range from small community institutions and fintechs to large digital partners. This candidate will enable new business and opportunities by thinking creatively and utilizing the Franchise to develop compelling use cases, drive scale, enable interoperability, create world‑class experiences for end users, and deliver differentiated value to our customers.

The Director is a high‑visibility role collaborating with key stakeholders across cross‑functional teams, including Digital, Core Products, Commercial and New Payment Flows, Account Teams, Legal, Regulatory, and Services. The broad scope of activities associated with this role will allow the candidate to grow their breadth of Mastercard experience not only in traditional card payment models but also across all forms of Next Gen payments including account‑based payments.

The role is based in Purchase, NY and must adhere to Mastercard's in‑office requirements. This position will have a reporting line into the VP, North America Franchise.

• Co‑develop and support new concepts that support expanding the franchise and creating additional value for Mastercard and its customers, while at the same time upholding the integrity of the Mastercard Brand and Franchise principles
• Stay ahead of business trends related to market and business opportunities, locally and globally
• Provide direction for the creation of new products (e.g., xBorder Services, Installments, Mastercard One, Private Label models, Crypto) to transform the payment ecosystem
• Partner closely with the regional and global Digital teams to enhance foundational digital standards and advance the security of digital commerce via tokenization and authentication while upholding the principles of transparency and interoperability
• Partner with the New Payment Flows and Services teams to grow account‑to‑account payment models and Open Finance solutions in North America leveraging Franchise Standards to drive new business
• Contribute to the development of Franchise standards closely aligned with product vision to build a seamless path of scalability for A2A products and services
• Execute on the team goals to achieve Franchise priorities in tandem with regional business objectives

• Robust understanding of Mastercard's Franchise Standards and Products
• Attention to detail, strong business acumen and solutions‑orientation are critical, as is an ability to demonstrate thought leadership
• Technical and/or product development experience
• Strong analytical, problem solving, agility and creative thinking skills
• Strong interpersonal skills with demonstrated cross‑functional collaboration and teamwork
• Ability to think on your feet and remain composed under pressure
• Solutions oriented / results driven capabilities
• Ability to interact effectively with internal and external business partners
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written – ability to build compelling presentations and influence…