Mastercard Creates Toronto LaaS Division and Brings Masterpass to Costco.ca
Mastercard has announced a brand new Labs as a Service (LaaS) division located at its Canadian headquarters in Toronto.
The new division will provide innovation consulting services and help new and existing Canadian clients grow their businesses. LaaS helps to combine two sections of Mastercard: Labs and Advisors. Labs is the global research and development arm of Mastercard and Advisors is the professional service arm for the company.
This new practice will deliver customized innovation programs, products and support designed to tackle specific product or innovation culture challenges. Some Mastercard LaaS offerings include LaunchPad, a five day rapid prototyping and design service; IdeaBox, a program that helps turn employee ideas into realities and from “intrapreneurs;” and Experience Design, UI/UX design services and customer testing. This all comes along with product build-out service and pilot development.
The new Toronto LaaS division is the result of increasing demands for customized innovation solutions in the country.
“The ability to develop new ideas and timely solutions to real problems is key to growing business,” says Jeremy Bornstein, senior VP and market lead of Mastercard Canada Advisors. “Labs as a Service combines Mastercard’s strength in R&D and deep services expertise to deliver cost effective, customized programs that help clients take their innovations from connect to market faster.
Mastercard also announced that its popular Masterpass will be live online in Canada in the coming weeks at the massive grocery chain Costco. This is following a 2014 announcement where Costco declared they would exclusively accept the Mastercard credit network at its 97 Canadian stores.
Masterpass stores all payment information from Mastercard along with other payment networks in one convenient place.
“Canadians…expect an experience that is fast, convenient and secure,” says Iain McLean, senior VP of Canada Market Development at Mastercard. “With Masterpass available at Costco.ca, members get the checkout experience they have come to expect with Mastercard.”
Mastercard is a leading company in the global payments industry, with over 40 million merchants and 2.5 billion active credit cards in their network of 210 countries and territories.
