Specialist, Strategic Product Initiatives

Our Purpose
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we're helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Title and Summary
Specialist, Strategic Product Initiatives
Who is Mastercard?
We are the global technology company behind the world's fastest payments processing network. We are a vehicle for commerce, a connection to financial systems for the previously excluded, a technology innovation lab, and the home of Priceless®. We ensure every employee has opportunity to be a part of something bigger and to change lives. We believe as our company grows, so should you. We believe in connecting everyone to endless, priceless possibilities.
Role Overview
As a Specialist, Strategic Product Initiatives within Core Payments, you are responsible for driving the growth of digital payments in underpenetrated verticals. You lead the development and execution of acceptance-led strategies that unlock incremental payment flows, working across global and regional teams to scale solutions that improve efficiency, adoption, and customer outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
1. Strategy & Market Development• Identify and prioritise high-impact markets, use cases, and verticals to drive payment volume growth• Translate research and market findings into clear strategic narratives and actionable plans
2. Product & Solution Enablement• Support the design and evolution of payment solutions and value propositions and help embed acceptance capabilities into broader product strategies, bundles, and go-to-market programmes • Codify and scale best practices, playbooks, and reusable assets across markets
3. Ecosystem, Partnership & Cross-functional Collaboration• Support development of channel partnership strategies (e.g., acquirers, ISVs) to extend reach• Work closely with teams across Acceptance, Product, Sales, Regional Markets and Marketing to align with stakeholders on priorities, solutions, and execution plans• Align stakeholders on priorities, solutions, and execution plans• Act as a connector between global strategy and market execution, ensuring consistency and scalability
4. Insights, Reporting & Thought Leadership• Lead development of research, analysis, and insights to inform strategy and decision-making• Synthesize complex inputs into executive-ready materials, QBRs, and workshop content
Key Skills & Experience• Consulting background (must have)• Strategic thinking and problem-solving - translates complex insights into clear, actionable strategies across multiple markets• Communication and storytelling, executive-ready written and verbal communication, with the ability to build compelling narratives
Nice-to-have• Experience in payments, bill pay, or underpenetrated verticals (rent, healthcare, utilities, insurance, education)
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.