What's Next In

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman talks with Brandon “Stix” Salaam-Bailey, the Watts-born-and-bred hip-hop artist who is the force behind the ThinkWatts Foundation, the nonprofit delivering an ever-expanding range of programs — from weekly food distribution, environmental justice initiatives, and coding, financial education and entrepreneurship workshops, to name a few — to underserved residents in his community, where the poverty rate is more than twice the national average, and beyond. On the podcast, Stix shares his journey from rapper and producer to activist and social entrepreneur, highlighting some of the success stories he’s shepherded through ThinkWatts, his plans for the foundation’s future, and his reflections on the community that forged him.

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology,innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Einat Haftel, the chief product officer at Dynamic Yield, the AI-powered experience operating system that helps companies build hyper-personalized digital experiences with great agility and speed. And in a modern world where personalization is key, Shopping Muse, Dynamic Yield’s new virtual digital assistant driven by generative AI, is bringing a new edge to conversational commerce.

“You can go into a store, talk to consultant, say, ‘I have light features and want this makeup,’ and they help you, but you can't do that when you shop online. Shopping Muse is designed to solve exactly that,” she says. Haftel also discusses the future of personalization, how AI is evolving and how that is changing how peopleinteract with it and trust its outputs. “I think AI will actually start to be empathic to the user and we are going to see people adapt,” she says.

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Nitendra Rajput, senior vice president and head of Mastercard’s AI Garage, which applies AI at scale across Mastercard, developing new algorithms and collaborating with teams to design and develop new products and services.

Rajput discusses the way cyber criminals are capitalizing on AI, how the company is accelerating the adoption of AI through innovative partnerships, and why it’s critical to put in place guardrails to ensure AI is used responsibly. A researcher and prolific patent developer who started his career in speech recognition, Rajput says AI can help us better understand the world around us – and perhaps better understand ourselves as well.

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Mastercard's Tara Nathan, the founder of Community Pass, a digital infrastructure that increases access to critical services including healthcare, agriculture and micro-commerce for people in underserved, remote, and frequently offline communities.

As world leaders gather in New York City for the U.N. General Assembly to discuss how to accelerate action on the sustainable development goals, including reducing poverty, hunger, and inequality, Nathan discusses the role the private sector can play in delivering services in a commercially sustainable and scalable way and how people can harness digitization and their own data to improve their lives and livelihoods.

"We're peeling back the layers to a problem and creating solutions," Nathan says. "Digitization is helping to bring critical services and brighter opportunities to people in developing markets — and Mastercard is working to bridge the stiff digital divide."

Today, there are more real-time digital transactions in India than the U.S., China and Europe combined. That’s a testament to the country’s enormous size — it recently passed China to become world’s most populous nation — but even more so, it’s a testament to the country’s embrace of digitization.  In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Gautam Aggarwal, division president, South Asia, and Mastercard’s country corporate officer for India.

Aggarwal gives us his take on the evolution of the once largely-agrarian economy into one of the world’s great technology hubs, the government’s Digital India initiative and digital public infrastructure, and the partnerships Mastercard is forging to move that vision forward for the microentrepreneurs and small business owners, both in rural and urban areas, that are the backbone of the Indian economy. “If you won't do the right things, by being inclusive, you won't be able to scale,” he says. “It’s almost become the beacon for the rest of the world and showing to the rest of the word how to do it right.”

Atlanta routinely makes the “best cities” lists — best places for creatives, best places to start a business, cities with the most Fortune 500 company headquarters, and, most recently, it topped Money magazine’s annual “Best Places to Live” ranking.

But Atlanta also finds itself at the top of a far less vaunted list: It ranked first for income equality among large cities, according to the latest U.S. Census data, with experts pointing to deep-rooted racial disparities in a city that is nearly 50% Black.

The innovation for which the city is celebrated has not reaped benefits for all of its citizens, but that can change. In fact, innovative data tools and partners that connect Black families and entrepreneurs to the digital economy could go a long way in creating a more inclusive and equitable city.

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Atlanta’s deputy chief equity officer La’Shawn Brown Dudley and Salah Goss and Arturo Franco, both with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, on how harnessing data with inclusion in mind can help leaders make smarter decision and use their resources more effectively.

Dudley was part of the inaugural cohort of Data for Equity, a 10-week program that brought together equity, technology and data officers from around the country to learn new ways to use the power of data to advance economic inclusion. Launched by the Centre for Public Impact and the Center for Inclusive Growth, the program is part of Mastercard’s $500 million In Solidarity initiative to narrow the racial opportunity gap, with a focus on Atlanta and six other American cities.

In Atlanta, that work includes a $950,000 grant to the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs to support RICE’s Big IDEAS curriculum, including education, technical and financial assistance, and support of Operation HOPE’s 1 Million Black Businesses initiative, to create and grow Black-owned businesses through financial wellness education, small business coaching and help accessing capital.

Long before generative AI began capturing the public’s imagination, Mastercard has been harnessing AI to help financial institutions and other businesses make smarter decisions — from spotting fraudulent transactions to enabling seamless onboarding for cardholders and merchants to identifying fraud, waste and abuse in health care claims.

In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” Mastercard’s podcast that informally explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman chats with Amyn Dhala, the chief product officer for Brighterion, a Mastercard company.

Dhala dives into how Mastercard uses AI, how it enables trust in the payments ecosystem, and the need for companies to embrace ethical and explainable AI to ensure that trust continues and enables even more innovation and better customer experiences.

“In the end, I'm hoping that one day digital assets will actually become boring. And that's actually one of my aspirational goals.” Of all the virtual ink spilled on the crypto economy, particularly in recent weeks, no one is accusing it of being boring. But that’s what Linda Jeng, the chief global regulatory officer for the Crypto Council for Innovation, believes could happen if new regulations are eventually written to make digital currencies safer.In the latest episode of “What’s Next In,” the Mastercard podcast that explores technology, innovation and ideas, host Vicki Hyman discusses digital currency regulation and crypto innovation. Her guests for this episode are Jeng, whose organization encourages responsible crypto regulation, and Jesse McWaters, Mastercard’s head of regulatory advocacy.

In the crypto economy, the last few years have been a period of innovation, experimentation and more than a little trepidation. The value of the crypto market skyrocketed to nearly $3 trillion before tumbling again; non-fungible tokens seemed to arrive out of nowhere to capture the imagination of artists, collectors and brands; and blockchain-based applications such as smart contracts began gaining traction.

During this time, Raj Dhamodharan has been leading the Mastercard’s efforts in the space as its global head of crypto and blockchain. He says Mastercard’s role is straightforward: enabling choice by bringing simplicity and safety to the crypto economy.  That may be through crypto card programs where people can instantly convert their crypto to pay at merchants who accept Mastercard, by making it easier for people to buy NFTs, or by helping crypto wallets and exchanges perform identity and fraud checks and understand their risk.

In the wide-ranging conversation with host Vicki Hyman, he also discusses the evolution of blockchain and crypto, the principles the company developed to evaluate crypto opportunities, and the role of regulation in helping the crypto economy realize its potential.