Mastercard is planning to combine its physical and digital payments teams, and they will get a new leader, the company has announced.
The change is formally scheduled to take effect on April 2nd. Garry Lyons, who led the development of Mastercard’s digital payments team as head of the Mastercard Labs R&D division, will depart from his role on June 1st, while Chief Product Officer Michael Miebach will take his place as the head of the newly established Products and Innovation team.
The changes appear to reflect the growing digitization of Mastercard’s business; while digital payments has for many years been perceived as a novel branch of mainstream payments, it is clearly now perceived by Mastercard as a part of the core payments business. This may point to an increasingly central role for Masterpass, Mastercard’s multi-channel digital payments platform, and also seems to reflect the growing importance of digital technologies like biometric fingerprint scans in card-based physical payments.
Lyons, meanwhile, is leaving the company to start “a new technology initiative closely aligned with Mastercard,” according to a statement announcing the changes. Mastercard did not offer further details about the nature of this venture, but did say that Lyons’ organization “will provide services to Mastercard, its partners and its customers,” and added that in his new role Lyons will “remain a senior advisor to the company’s Management Committee.”
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