Andrew Ong has been named head of
person-to-person payments (P2P) at MasterCard Asia-Pacific, Middle
East and Africa (APMEA) as it looks to drive innovation in the
$233 billion P2P transfer market.
Based in Singapore,
Ong, previously managing director of North Asia at
Western Union, will be a key figure in advancing payment
services through the Mastercard’s MoneySend platform. He held
previous positions at GE, IBM and Hewlett Packard.
MasterCard’s MoneySend is available in 17
countries in APMEA including including India, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and the
UAE.
Ongwill be responsible for identifying and
evaluating new P2P payment solutions and will help grow
MasterCard’s overall transaction processing and gross dollar
volume.
In 2006 P2P transfers were recorded
at $233 billion by the World Bank. Analysts at Aite Group
forecast that figure will grow to $456 billion by 2010,
making money transfers one of the largest growth opportunities in
the payments market.
“We are excited for Andrew Ong to join our
innovative platforms team as we continue to build MasterCard’s
innovation profile with solutions that meet the needs of the global
marketplace,” said Joshua Peirez, group executive
of innovative platforms at MasterCard.
“His well-rounded experience for the world’s
leading technology and money transfer companies will even better
enable MasterCard to bring innovative P2P solutions to market
intelligently and efficiently giving consumers around the world a
better way to exchange funds.”
