Denzil Lawson

'One major step was moving our regional headquarters to Dubai Internet City two years ago,' says Senior Vice President, Sales and Business Development Denzil Lawson whose vast region covers South Asia, the Middle East and the whole of Africa.

'The three most senior managers based here jointly have more than 60 years of payments experience. This is an excellent hub with Emirates Airline to fly us around the region, and within our area we have 38% of the world's population'.

Mr. Lawson maintains that the biggest competitor for MasterCard is still cash and not rival cards. 'Studies show that around 70% of an individual's transactions could be by credit card and yet penetration today is 5-10%. We have not really scratched the surface yet.'

However, MasterCard is rather like the swan sitting serenely on a lake; there is a lot going on beneath the surface. In the Middle East, for example, Islamic credit cards are big news.

'We launched four Islamic credit cards across the Middle East and North Africa region in 2003,' says Mr. Lawson. 'The cards offer consumers that can not use standard credit cards for religious reasons a new payment solution with no compromise to Sharia Law.

'We have Al-Tayseer with the Kuwait Finance House, Al Khair with Samba Group, while in Bahrain the Shamil Bank has developed the Al-Rubban Islamic card. And the National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia has also designed an Islamic program for its cardholders. We are working on Islamic card launches in Dubai right now.'

MasterCard is also moving big time into corporate sponsorships, and sponsored the Dubai Desert Classic golf tournament locally this year and will sponsor the Channels retail banking event this weekend and the Cards Middle East conference in May.

'The regional office is building the brand here,' explains Mr. Lawson who joined MasterCard in 2002 from ANZ where he was most recently Head of International Electronic Banking. 'But worldwide we have some of the biggest sponsorships such as football's 2006 World Cup and Euro 2004.'

There will also be some interesting new products from MasterCard. For instance a pilot scheme is already running for a radio frequency embedded chip card that will automatically pay-up at a petrol station without needing to be swiped. Another is a quick payment solution for use at fast food outlets that does not require verification and so is quick to use for small transactions.

'We also want to get to the un-banked population,' says Mr. Lawson. 'We have pre-paid or offline chip-based debit cards in South Africa which is something we may bring here. Money transfer is another major opportunity, and we have a pilot scheme running with the National Bank of Egypt for a pre-paid solution.

'Our main competition is cash and checks and we compete with innovation,' he says. 'Business to business money transfer also offers tremendous potential and we are very excited by the Dubai Ports' new Purchase to Pay card which is a MasterCard system.'