MasterCard plans 130 jobs for high-tech roles

MASTERCARD IS looking to hire staff in Dublin who will develop futuristic mobile phone and voice and gesture payment methods, the company has said.

Announcing 130 new jobs yesterday, the credit card company says the roles to be created over the next four years, and which are supported by IDA Ireland, will drive innovation at the company.

“At our core, MasterCard is a technology company that happens to be in the payments space,” said chief innovation officer of MasterCard Worldwide Garry Lyons.

“We are building solutions that you are going to use, your friends are going to use and your kids are going to use.”

Some of the new jobs will be at MasterCard Labs, the company’s global research and development function. Headquartered in Dublin, the unit is led globally by Mr Lyons who is the former chief executive of Irish electronic payments software company Orbiscom.

Orbiscom was acquired by MasterCard for about $100 million (€73.4 million) in 2008, with some 95 per cent of Orbiscom staff remaining at MasterCard.

While 85 per cent of transactions globally are still by cash and cheque, Mr Lyons said the new recruits would be working with mobile, voice and gesture technologies to design the payment methods of the future.

“In Dublin, we’re already working on using mobile phones and Microsoft Kinect to enable payments,” he said.

“For example, the ability to interact using the Kinect device to pay for something you are watching on television.”

Mr Lyons said the mobile phone could also play a key role in future payment.

“It’s an intelligent device so you can interact a lot better with the consumer to create a more compelling experience before, during and after the payment,” he said.

“By telling you where they are and what they’ve purchased previously, mobile technology can create a much more interesting experience for the consumer.”

With recruitment also happening at the company’s new Java centre of excellence, Mr Lyons said MasterCard was looking for people with experience in the Java, C# and C programming languages but also those “passionate about technology and who want to use it to solve problems”.

Mr Lyons said the company was confident it could find the right talent for the roles and said that MasterCard was looking to attract “the types of people you would find in well-known high tech companies or tech start-ups”.

The company is to move from its Blackrock offices to a new, undisclosed Dublin location over Easter.