Mastercard seeks bigger Dublin office amid rapid expansion

Credit card company Mastercard is scouting for bigger office space in Dublin amid a rapid expansion of its Irish operations.

The Irish subsidiary has expanded its workforce from 25 to more than 500 in 10 years and is has outgrown its current Mountainview office space in Leopardstown, which it sublets from telecoms group Vodafone.

A spokesman for Mastercard Ireland declined to comment. However, industry sources said the company was seeking to lease between 150,000sq ft and 300,000sq ft of prime office space in Dublin to accommodate future expansion. The move is not thought to be Brexit-related. The company’s chief executive Ajay Banga said recently that Brexit did not pose a significant risk to its business as the technology works exactly the same way whatever the geopolitical structure.

Mastercard’s Leopardstown office, established in 2008, is the company’s European technology hub, in charge of developing various payment technologies in conjunction with banks and credit card issuers. It is also home to Mastercard Labs, the company’s global research and development arm.

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Mastercard Ireland currently rents out several floors of the Mountainview block from Vodafone and only recently took on additional space.

Until recently the Irish arm had been run at a loss with the focus on developing technologies for the global business. However, the subsidiary’s most recently-filed accounts show the unit bounced back from a €30.9 million pretax loss in 2016 to record a €14.2 million profit in 2017 as revenue jumped from €18.6 million to €30 million. The company’s finances were also boosted by a €45 million non-refundable capital contribution from its parent.

Mastercard, the second-largest payments company globally behind Visa, has been focused on digital payment solutions, such as the QKR app, which is used by the likes of restaurant chain Wagamama, and Identity Check, a biometrics-based product used for verifying identities.

Earlier this month it agreed to buy the bulk of Danish payments firm Nets’s corporate services business for €2.85 billion. The acquisition increases the company’s footprint in the faster payments industry. It follows the company’s acquisition in 2016 of UK-based VocaLink, which facilitates direct payments between bank accounts.

Mr Banga noted in the company’s most recent earnings release that its acquisitions and partnerships were enabling it to address changing payment needs, and specifically “real-time account-to-account and cross-border payments.”