Mastercard Executive Helps Asia Central Banks Go Mobile: Q&A

Mastercard Inc. is tapping Asia’s leap into the mobile era, helping central banks build their payments networks and enrolling tech players like Alipay and Grab Holdings Inc. to use its service on their platforms, according to executive vice president Rama Sridhar, who oversees digital partnerships in Asia.

When Singapore’s central bank envisioned building a payments network that would allow people to send money to each other using only a mobile phone number, it reached out to Sridhar. The payments company is now creating similar infrastructure in the Philippines and three other countries. Meantime, it’s trying to gain access to China’s $27 trillion of digital transactions.