Olympics is an example of what
goes wrong when you do not have competition
Marion King, President of MasterCard UK &
Ireland has said that Visa’s exclusion of other network-branded
payments cards from Olympic venues is “a great example of why you
need competition in the market”.
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King, who joined MasterCard from VocaLink in
February, said the network has work to do in order to regain a
position in the UK debit market, which is currently dominated by
Visa.
“If there is one dominant player, they will
act in a dominant way,” she said. “And that is clearly not good for
the customer. Competition is necessary in order to encourage more
innovation.
“For me the Olympics is a great example
of what goes wrong if you don’t have competition,” she said, in
reference to the fact that only Visa-branded cards will be accepted
in Olympic venues. “The UK debit market is dominated by one player.
My role is to get a balance back, and I am going to fight hard to
achieve that.”
King said that the fight will not be primarily
on grounds of cost, or product spec. “This is a commercial world,
and we need to demonstrate why MasterCard should have a share in
the UK’s debit market,” she said. “But it is not just about the
price of the product, or its capability. It is going to be about
growing long-term relationships around innovation, and providing
capabilities beyond the standard card-based propositions we have
today.”
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By GlobalDataKing believes MasterCard is well-placed to do
that. “We are not bank-owned, are well-resourced and have the
innovative capability. We now need to work hard to convince our
customers that our way is the right way forward,” she said.
MasterCard relaunched its debit portfolio at
the beginning of this year, telling Cards International that it
intended to offer its World Elite ‘premier debit’ product to UK
issuers, and expecting to see significant interest from banks
during 2012.
At the time, the network said intended to
differentiate itself by enabling banks to build loyalty products
around their debit portfolios.
King confirmed that, while there are economic
barriers to doing so, the possibility of opening up the ‘Priceless’
loyalty platform to debit customers is “not off the table”, saying
she intends to “bring all the capabilities of MasterCard to bear in
order to win back market share”.
