To be commercially successful and competitive today, companies must be agile and diversify
They must deepen connections with their customers and boost engagement with more tailor-made, personalised offerings. Technology plays a central role in organizations seeking new opportunities across multiple sectors.
Payments technology giant Mastercard is one of the main players in this space, helping companies get closer to their customers, and offer more diverse services. Beyond banks and financial institutions, Mastercard works closely with telecommunications operators, retailers and e-tailers, digital service providers, mobility platforms, food delivery companies, travel websites, governments and fintech start-ups.
“Technology is giving consumers more choice, more personalized offers, and seamless interaction. By listening to pain points, applying our expertise, tapping into the scale and reach of our network, we’ve been developing strategic digital transformation plans that are adding value,” says Amnah Ajmal, EVP, market development, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mastercard. “Our portfolio of integrated services and solutions are generating new business, driving loyalty, protecting digital systems, enhancing decision-making, providing insights, and creating new opportunities beyond payments,”
Mastercard’s strategic partnership with e& is a great example of how the company’s technology expertise can take consumer engagement to new heights. e& is forging an ambitious digital transformation journey, and Mastercard is supporting them by integrating digital payment services in a way that adds value and enhances user-friendliness, for example by making in-store or online payments instantly, anywhere in the world.
Beyond telecoms, retail is another key industry benefiting from a strategic digitalization approach. As consumers demand more choice and convenience, it’s essential that retailers offer omnichannel payments to meet this need and capitalise on covering multiple consumer touchpoints – both physical and digital. To benefit from fast-growing channels especially, it’s vital that retailers have a strong electronic payments strategy, given that e-commerce is projected to be the fastest growing retail channel worldwide, in position to account for approximately 24% of retail sales by 2027.
Over the past decade, technology adoption in retail went from digital, virtual and social commerce to contactless and even biometric checkout. In tandem with this technological surge, consumer expectations for personalization and engaging retail experiences continue to evolve dramatically. In this respect, generative AI tools have played a key role around product discovery, search functions and overall user experience. Loyalty programs are another way that retailers are enhancing the consumer experience, including by suggesting products based on past transactions, and rewarding repeat transactions.
In its latest collaboration, Mastercard is partnering with Alshaya Group to help expand Aura, its loyalty program. This will include the launch of an Aura co-branded credit card in multiple markets over the next two years including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. The collaboration aims to help drive growth of the retail sector across the GCC region and will bring additional benefits to the 8.3 million Aura members, spanning over 70 brands ranging from dining to fashion, beauty and homeware.
“For us it’s about enabling the retail sector. We know that retailers want to understand how the ever-changing shopping experience impacts today’s consumers,” continues Ajmal. “We look forward to adding value to Alshaya Group by enhancing the shopping experience through the Aura loyalty program, by leveraging the benefits of our technology, insights, data analytics and global expertise.”
One of the best tools to help retailers understand how to meet the demands of consumers, is Mastercard’s SpendingPulse, a platform that blends historical and real-time spending patterns, providing insights and forecasts. Through visualized data, it empowers retailers to make decisions with market intelligence that measures in-store and online retail sales across all payment forms.
Additional functions include industry benchmarks to compare sales data, identification of key sales days, trends affecting the retail industry, and spotlighting outliers including markets that are outperforming or underperforming. This can be valuable for multiple operational functions within retail, from when to invest in additional marketing, plan for expansion, or provide consumer incentives.
As more companies outside of traditional finance turn their attention to payments as a way to drive engagement and loyalty, the principal challenge is building new experiences that feature a range of personalized and contextualized services within the platforms to consumers.
“It’s also essential that we build trust in digital payments through advanced cybersecurity solutions and innovation. AI is great at identifying patterns and combatting financial crime. And those objectives are high on the agenda of most organizations these days,” says Ajmal. “At Mastercard, we continue to tap into new technologies like AI to develop new value propositions that are personalized and contextual, shaping the future of commerce, solving real problems for businesses, and making people’s lives easier.”