Magic moves, monster moments

Welcome to Inside the Circles, your scoop on the people, tech and trends shaping the digital economy and beyond.  

As young children growing up more than a hundred miles apart in northwest Georgia, both Hope Nestlehutt and Caleb Veitch had similar earth-shaking encounters – via TV screens – with one Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga. 

“I was just so amazed,” he remembers. “My little 7-year-old brain was like, ‘What the heck am I watching?’ Like something shifted,” Veitch says, recalling the diva performing “Poker Face” on a translucent piano wearing a patchwork denim jumpsuit and astral headgear. “Whenever I listened to Lady Gaga, I felt like I was a star,” Nestlehutt says. “It unlocked the inner monster, the inner pop star that wanted to come out.” 

Mastercard and Gaga teamed up on a contest, in which fans submitted clips mirroring the Mistress’s spine-defying choreography from her blockbuster “Abracadabra” music video. These two medical students — now best friends — took on the challenge and won a magical opportunity to meet the pop icon and perform alongside her in a new version of the video with other contest winners. Read more about the pair’s journey from gastroenterology finals to the pinnacle of fandom here.

The future of checkout  

Do you suffer from fat finger syndrome? It’s a very common malady of the digital age characterized by error messages, aggravation and excessive swearing. Despite the name, sufferers are not limited to those with thick fingers — causes also include bad website design and user impatience — and it strikes most often at mobile checkout, where users often struggle with typing in their 16-digit payment card numbers on teeny tiny screens.   

There is, however, a cure. Many innovations are coalescing to make manual entry of card information unnecessary. Those innovations include tokenization, which replaces card numbers with randomly generated ones, so your actual card data is never transmitted to a merchant; payment passkeys, which use biometrics to authenticate users instead of hard-to-recall passwords; and Click to Pay, the online checkout service putting your preferred card at your fingerprints.  

In fact, the days of manual card entry are actively on the way out. Mastercard is committed to eliminating it for online purchases globally by 2030. Jorn Lambert , Mastercard’s chief product officer, breaks it down for you here. Looking for a deep dive of tokenization, the encryption technique that Mastercard pioneered a decade ago? Here you go.  

Marketing for tomorrow 

The principles of modern marketing were laid down decades ago, but technology and culture has dramatically changed in a very short time. On “Quantum Marketing with Raja Rajamannar ,” a new video series with Bloomberg Originals, Mastercard’s chief marketing and communications officer chats with other leaders — from McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown to Mattel Chief Brand Officer Lisa McKnight, among others — about how to cut through the noise and build the future of marketing. Watch the first episode, with Liquid Death’s Dan Murphy, here. Other episodes will drop weekly.  

The last word 

“You've got to cope with the fact that this person you were madly in love with, and who you thought loved you, didn't even exist. It was just a character created purposefully to destroy your life.” 

- Anna Rowe, a U.K. romance scam expert who wants to remove the stigma associated with this most intimate of frauds, to the Mastercard Newsroom. Learn how these scammers mimic the emotional manipulation of abusers to access and exploit their victims’ trust here.  

Watch out 

Recorded Future, the leading global threat intelligence company recently acquired by Mastercard, combs the internet for signals to help its clients — financial institutions, governments, businesses – secure their digital worlds. As we close out Fraud Prevention Month, go inside its headquarters to learn about the evolution of threat intelligence, how its experts track and assess threats, and get a 101 on this relatively new branch of cybersecurity.  

ICYMI  

AI in the aisles: A new case study by the Mastercard Economics Institute shows online grocery shopping is primed to benefit from AI, from algorithms simplifying repurchasing to more tailored recommendations, strengthening loyalty. Check it out here.   

The missing middle: Middle-market companies, defined as those with between 50 and 250 employees, are a fast-growing but often overlooked segment. Mastercard’s new Mid-Market Accelerator program helps financial providers offer products and services to reach these companies, from cards with customized rewards to cash flow management tools.   

Game on: The global gaming market will be worth $226 billion this year, with Asia leading the way, according to a new IDC brief sponsored by Mastercard. Loyalty programs can tap into the gaming economy by integrating with in-game currencies, gaining access to this super-engaged user base. Learn how to level up loyalty here.   

Always innovating: How can businesses stay ahead in their industries? The IMD Business School wrote up a case study looking into Mastercard’s playbook and how it continues to set the agenda in payments and commerce during the digital age. Read the report.