Born into a Sikh family in Khadki outside Maharashtra in 1961 , Ajaypal Singh Banga is the current President and Chief Executive Officer of Mastercard . He is also the younger brother of another well known CEO M.S Banga . His family originally belongs from Jalandhar ,Punjab . Mr. Banga was constantly on the move due to his father Lt.General Harbhajan Singh Banga’s army background . He got schooled across various cities of India such as Secunderabad, Jalandhar, Delhi, Hyderabad and Shimla . Ajaypal Singh Banga was interested in economics and did not wish to opt for a career in the military like his father . He went on to graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University with a BA degree in Economics . Mr. Banga started of his career as a management trainee at Nestle India . He spent the next 13 years participating in assignments spanning from sales and marketing to general management . He later joined Pepsi.co’s restaurant division and was responsible for the launch of Pizza Hut and KFC in India . Ajaypal Singh Banga joined Citigroup in 1996 as the head of marketing in India for the consumer business. He also held a variety of senior management roles in the United States, Asia Pacific, and the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions.In 2000, Mr. Banga was promoted to head CitiFinancial and the U.S. consumer assets division . Mr. Banga’s first stint in United States came in 2002 , when he took over the retail bank in North America . in 2008 Ajaypal Singh Banga moved to Hong Kong with Citigroup and was responsible for overlooking all of Citibank’s businesses in Asia including credit cards and consumer banking, institutional banking, wealth management and alternative investments . In 2009 Ajaypal Singh Banga joined Mastercard and returned to the US . Mr. Banga’s task was to chase down leader Visa at a time both networks are said to be benefiting from consumers’ increased shift to plastic. He redesigned the debit card product with its package of features, connecting it to music, and created a whole new marketing approach with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The results were dramatic. Regarding high-tech innovation one area of development was that could transform driving e-commerce, mobile and transit fares. The other was a group in MasterCard Labs of basically young, trendy, inventive people developing new ideas, and trying to embed them to their clients. It’s a way to build, for banks and merchants, new innovative ways to pay for goods and services — such as being able to read a bar code from your phone and convert that to a purchase. Within the last five years, Mr. Banga has also served on the boards of trustees of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., the National Urban League and the New York Hall of Science, and was a director of the Council for Economic Education. Mr. Banga has a keen interest in social development issues and was named by ‘The Economic Times of India’ as the fourth “Most Powerful Indian” in the world.
