Mastercard’s CTO of Operations answers what it means to be a CTO today in financial services and how to catch the right wave in tech

The pandemic was a time of uncertainty and in those socially isolated days, one thing became clear: digital channels are important everywhere but most important, perhaps, in financial services. 

The symbiosis between financial services and technology has cast a spotlight on the role of the CTO. While not the captain, the CTO is the shipwright, and as such, responsible for how the company performs. 

In fact, Mastercard’s CTO of Operations George Maddaloni thinks technology is to Mastercard, what the cardiovascular system is to humans. 

“We’re powering the cardiovascular system of Mastercard. It helps connect the team, and so as a leader, when you can provide that mission to your team, it takes them to a little bit of a higher level, and gives them a perspective,” said Maddaloni. 

Peering into the technological crystal ball

As a decision maker, it falls on Maddaloni to look beyond technological fads and be able to zoom into the future of an emerging technology. And technologies that can have a significant impact on how things are done today are emerging faster, Maddaloni says. 

To describe this, he uses a surfing analogy:

“The waves that are coming ashore used to be a little bit more predictable and not as frequent. If you caught a good one, you were happy. But now they’re just coming faster and faster,” he said. 

George Maddaloni, CTO, Operations, Mastercard

The tech playbook

As things get more unpredictable, Mastercard has a set of guidelines that informs how they approach new tech. Maddaloni and his team’s first job is to stay connected to consumer sentiment about new and existing tech and then think about their competition. “Of course, in our business there’s not just traditional competition, but disruption that you’ve got to be aware of, and you have to understand what’s happening there,” he said.

Beyond that, they have to make sure their plans align with the regulation. Maddaloni says:

“In financial services, we’re a regulated business. So we always think about the regulatory aspects of it. And a lot of the regulatory aspects are about protecting the consumer. So we’re constantly trying to make sure that we’re keeping that in mind,” he said.

Maddaloni says the best example of how this plays out in the real world comes from Mastercard’s implementation of the cloud. The firm was observing fintechs and financial institutions moving to the cloud and realized that connecting to these partners would be much easier if the firm migrated. 

“We’ve actually scaled it in the past three years, and we’ve seen huge growth from it. The practical example –as unfortunate as it is – we’ve seen financial institutions from Ukraine that needed to move locations extremely quickly. They used the cloud to get reconnected in a new way. Huge success because that would have normally taken us months and we were able to make it happen in days,” said Maddaloni. 

This is what Maddaloni’s role is about: approaching tech in an organized and measured manner but being open to unexpected outcomes. The tech waves are unpredictable, but with the right set of guardrails, uncertainty isn’t synonymous with peril; it may be a harbinger of opportunities. 

Trust comes first  

There is also a trust factor that Maddaloni keeps center stage when testing a new tech or during deployment. It played a huge role in the firm’s cloud deployment, where stability of the connection was critical. 

“The capacity of these fintechs is not small. There are some applications that send a lot of throughput in one connection. It was key for us to make sure that we weren’t going to trip and that we were going to maintain that trust. And as a result, in the past year, we’ve seen about 150% growth from a traffic and transaction volume perspective,” said Maddaloni. 

And as new technologies keep rolling in, Maddaloni and Mastercard need to have a way to test their applicability as well. 

The litmus test for bad tech

Here, the leadership’s mantra is “if it’s not going to scale, it’s not going to matter,” said Maddaloni. The firm brings new tech into its R&D arm and works towards a proof of concept. It is at this stage that Maddaloni and his teams look beyond the organization and “lean on” partners, he says – something the firm has done already with the National Institute of Standards for quantum technology, for example. 

Maddoloni’s job demands that he looks at Mastercard with a systems view. “You do need to connect some of the smallest things to some of the biggest things. I think that when you think about a network: You’re only as good as your weakest link. You constantly have to think about the whole system in totality,” he said. 

Scalability and how the technology fits plays a critical role in deciding what technology is brought into the mothership. 

In a world where one cloud outage can affect the travel industry, banking, and healthcare, the CTO is one of the most important representatives of a company to the public. 

This adds another dimension to Maddaloni’s role: 

“From a Mastercard perspective, there’s certainly interest when you talk to us about our products, that there’s an understanding that there’s a healthy and a sizable amount of technology being run. I think making sure that that message is clear and that it’s extremely front and center for us. It’s something we’ve got a set of guiding principles around. And making sure that what we’re actually doing comes to life,” he added.

Sidebar: How Mastercard’s tech strategy changes as you climb the leadership chain

Sidebar is a member-exclusive section for TS Pro subscribers. Its a place where we explore adjacent stories and themes that expand upon the ideas mentioned in our main story. In this Sidebar we discuss how the philosophy described by George Maddaloni extends to and evolves as we go one level up the leadership change and peer into the thoughts of President and CTO and Ed McLaughlin. If you want to get access to this section, consider upgrading your membership by clicking below.