Banga, as the former head of the second-largest payment company, has sufficient experience in playing the balancing role. He has pushed for Mastercard’s growth in Asia even as he spoke of partnering with regional networks like the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and China’s UnionPay. In India, Banga lobbied with the government as head of the US-India Business Council and was the senior most payment industry CEO to engage with the government on the issue of local data storage norms. At the same time, he pumped over a billion dollars into India, investing in a payment-processing node and acquiring local processing companies to do business for the world.
“If you look at 3%, everyone is a rival. If you look at 97%, everyone is a partner. I look at associations such as NPCI and China UnionPay as partnerships to grow electronic payments,” Banga said in an interview with TOI in 2017. While he was a strong proponent of digitisation, he felt it should be incentivised and not forced. “If you want digitisation – whether it is card, phone or fingerprint – you cannot get that by fiat. You have to encourage and incentivise both the customer and the merchant,” Banga had said in the interview just after demonetisation.
Banga, who was appointed Mastercard chief soon after the 2008-09 financial crisis, tripled the company’s revenue during his tenure of over a decade, tapping into the surge in online shopping.
Like his elder brother, Manvinder Singh ‘Vindi’ Banga, who headed Unilever’s global food home and personal care division, the younger brother cut his teeth in FMCG with Nestle India, where he started his career in 1981 and spent several years rising to a senior position. He spent another two years in PepsiCo before moving to Citibank.
A graduate in economics from St Stephen’s College Delhi, Banga did his management from IIM-Ahmedabad. He made a lateral shift into banking in 1996 as Citibank’s head of marketing and sales in India. He rose to head of sales, marketing and business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, based in Brussels.