Director, Business Development, Growth Segments

Mastercard Inc.; Dubai; On-site; AED 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Mastercard in Dubai seeks a Director of Global Sales, Growth Segments, to lead opportunities across underserved sectors including micro and small enterprises, and rural communities. You will bridge Mastercard capabilities with market needs, manage multi-geography cycles, and drive scalable solutions.

The role requires strategic thinking, senior stakeholder engagement, and a track record in commercial leadership within payments and technology.

Qualifications

• Strong commercial experience in global or regional sales within payments, financial services, technology, or adjacent sectors.
• Ability to identify market opportunities, shape initiatives, build business cases, and move concepts to execution and scale.
• Experience managing long, complex sales cycles across geographies with stakeholder alignment.
• Knowledge of Mastercard core business areas or similar capabilities (issuing, acquiring, digital payments, data, technology).
• Ability to work with banks, fintechs, platforms, public-sector bodies, and international organizations.
• Proven cross-functional leadership across product, sales, market development, implementation, legal, compliance, risk, and operations.
• Comfort operating across diverse markets and cultures while focusing on commercial outcomes.
• Excellent communication and executive storytelling skills for compelling proposals and presentations.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with ownership and adaptability to grow segments and models.

Responsibilities

• Identify, qualify, and develop new Mastercard opportunities in underserved segments across geographies.
• Build and lead Growth Segments initiatives addressing financial inclusion, small business digitization, and rural commerce.
• Strengthen domestic relevance by aligning with local priorities and national digitalization agendas.
• Manage long, complex sales cycles from origination to solution design and launch readiness.
• Bridge Mastercard capabilities to create integrated value propositions for new segments.
• Collaborate with product to define value, partner models, pricing, roadmaps, and scale-up plans.
• Coordinate with regional teams to adapt global priorities to local realities and regulatory contexts.
• Manage relationships with banks, fintechs, technology providers, and sector-specific enterprises; support government and ecosystem partners when needed.
• Coordinate with product, sales, market development, legal, compliance, risk, technology, and delivery teams.
• Develop senior-level narratives, proposals, and commercial materials communicating opportunity and execution path.
• Track pipeline, manage risks, capture insights, and transition successful initiatives to repeatable models.

Skills

Commercial sales

Business development

Market development

Solution commercialization

Relationship management

Cross-functional collaboration

Executive storytelling

Entrepreneurial mindset

Job description

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

Director, Business Development, Growth Segments

Overview: Growth Segments is a team of innovators incubating businesses that extend Mastercard’s reach to low-income consumers and micro-merchants. By extending core business capabilities and functionalities to these segments, we drive secular shift of cash to digital and create domestic relevance for Mastercard in local economies. Our businesses are centered on building digital ecosystems that enable low-income segments to pay and get paid digitally, ultimately formalizing the economy. For example, we are incubating businesses that enable smallholder farmers to get paid more and faster, by organizing a digital ecosystem in agriculture and developing solutions that address gaps for FIs to serve the ag sector. We are passionate about the power of digital transformation to improve lives and livelihoods in underserved communities. Growth Segments is a global team focused on expanding Mastercard’s relevance in underserved segments and cash-predominant sectors. The Sales team identifies and builds new commercial opportunities that extend Mastercard’s core strengths in issuing, acquiring, payments, data, and technology into new markets, customer profiles, and ecosystem use cases.[SS1.1][VC1.2]

The Director, Global Sales, Growth Segments will be responsible for identifying high-potential opportunities, shaping new initiatives, and leading complex solution sales that drive adoption of scalable Mastercard offerings across underserved and cash-intensive sectors including micro and small enterprises, rural communities and agriculture value chains. The role requires the ability to manage long and complex sales cycles across multiple geographies, build bridges between Mastercard’s core products and technology assets, and translate market needs into commercially viable propositions.

A core ambition of the role is to strengthen Mastercard’s domestic relevance in priority markets by helping shift everyday payments, sector-specific value chains, and local commerce from cash-based interactions to secure, inclusive, and scalable digital payment ecosystems.

Reporting to the VP Sales, Growth Segments, the ideal candidate will be a strong commercial leader who can work across diverse markets and client profiles, including banks, sector-specific commercial enterprises, payments and technology players, government entities, international organizations, and internal Mastercard teams. The role requires strategic thinking, strong commercial acumen and negotiation skills, disciplined execution, and the ability to mobilize cross-functional teams to deliver growth initiatives from opportunity identification through commercialization and scale.

Role

• The essential responsibilities of the position include the following:
• Identify, qualify, and develop new business opportunities for Mastercard in underserved segments and cash-predominant sectors across multiple geographies.
• Build and lead new Growth Segments initiatives that address market needs in areas such as financial inclusion, small business digitization, rural commerce, agriculture ecosystems, micro-merchants, and emerging digital payment use cases.
• Strengthen Mastercard’s domestic relevance by developing initiatives that address local market priorities, support national digitalization agendas, and drive the secular shift from cash to digital payments across underserved and high-cash sectors.
• Manage long, complex sales cycles from opportunity origination through solution design, stakeholder alignment, commercial negotiation, implementation planning, and launch readiness.
• Bridge Mastercard’s core capabilities across issuing, acquiring, acceptance, digital payments, data, loyalty, cybersecurity, and technology assets to create integrated value propositions for new segments.
• Partner with product team to define the customer value proposition, partner model, revenue opportunity, business case, pricing approach, implementation roadmap, and scale-up plan.
• Work closely with regional and market teams to adapt global Growth Segments priorities to local market realities, client needs, regulatory environments, and ecosystem maturity.
• Manage relationships with a wide range of customer and client profiles, including issuing and acquiring banks, fintechs, technology providers and in general sector-specific commercial enterprises, payments and technology players. When relevant, support partnerships team when interacting with government entities, development organizations, platforms, and ecosystem partners.
• Coordinate across Mastercard product, sales, market development, legal, compliance, risk, technology, implementation, and delivery teams to ensure flexible and practical execution of complex opportunities.
• Develop senior-level narratives, proposals, business cases, and commercial materials that clearly communicate the opportunity, the Mastercard value proposition, and the path to execution.
• Track pipeline progress, manage risks and dependencies, capture market insights, and support the transition of successful initiatives from incubation to repeatable commercial models.

All About You

The ideal candidate for this position should have:

• Strong commercial experience in global or regional sales, business development, market development,or solution commercialization within payments, financial services, technology, or adjacent sectors.
• Proven ability to identify market opportunities, shape new initiatives, build business cases, and move concepts from early-stage incubation to commercial execution and scale.
• Experience managing long and complex sales cycles across multiple geographies, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, align stakeholders, and maintain momentum through execution.
• Strong understanding of Mastercard’s core business areas or comparable capabilities, including issuing, acquiring, acceptance, digital payments, data, and technology-enabled solutions.
• Ability to work effectively with diverse customer and partner profiles, including banks, fintechs, platforms, technology players, public-sector bodies, international organizations, and industry specialists.
• Demonstrated success working across cross-functional teams, including product, sales, market development, implementation, legal, compliance, risk, technology, and operations.
• Comfort operating across different markets, cultures, regulatory contexts, client maturity levels, and partnership models while staying focused on commercial outcomes.
• Excellent communication and executive storytelling skills, with the ability to develop compelling proposals, senior-level presentations, partner narratives, and internal alignment materials.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, strong ownership, commercial discipline, and the flexibility to adapt Mastercard assets and partnership models to new growth segments and market opportunities.

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.