Agentic Commerce & Services Program, Mastercard Start Path

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
Agentic Commerce & Services Program, Mastercard Start Path
Overview
Agentic commerce and agentic activity in the enterprise is no longer the future; it's here and happening. Partnership with the fast-developing and rich startup ecosystem is core to Mastercard's approach in building a secure and scalable agentic future. Through the Start Path Agentic Commerce & Services Program, we are accelerating secure agentic experiences and solutions for customers and businesses by partnering with agentic startups globally to drive cutting-edge innovation and adoption at scale.
Start Path is Mastercard's suite of award-winning global startup engagement programs that have worked with 500+ companies in 60 countries to drive best-in-class commercial deals, investments, and partnerships. Through the Start Path Agentic Commerce & Services Program, companies will be able to access bespoke opportunities to collaborate on new products and services that are tailored for agentic environments and on delivering cutting-edge capabilities designed for agentic experiences at scale.
The ideal candidate for this role will have a passion for startups and emerging technology, be motivated by a fast-paced environment and be a skilled cross-functional navigator & strategic thinker able to drive commercial impact and product innovation.
Role
The Start Path Agentic Commerce & Services Director will thesis-build on the fast-developing agentic ecosystem in order to help define opportunity spaces in the agentic economy for Mastercard; work directly with Mastercard product & partnerships teams to prioritize high impact agentic use cases, source and select best-in-class agentic startups for the program; identify collaboration opportunities for onboarded startups with Mastercard teams and customers in order to drive strategic and commercial value.
Key Responsibilities
- Deliver the vision, mission, and execution of Start Path Agentic Commerce & Services Program, including:
- Sourcing high-potential and strategic startups,
- Driving partnerships and engagements with selected startups for commercial and strategic outcomes
- Collaborating closely with product teams on developing partnership strategy.
- Track and analyze fast-emerging market trends in the agentic start-up space, doing market landscaping, startup due diligence and bringing back key strategic insights.
- Drive innovative commercial engagements with agentic startups across multiple use cases and parts of the agentic stack.
- Advocate and evangelize the agentic commerce & services strategy with internal and external stakeholders, including senior leadership at Mastercard, startups, venture capital firms, industry organizations and more.
- Liaise with Product teams across Mastercard on their product roadmaps and strategies to find opportunity for startup partnership
- Anticipate significant domestic and regional fintech trends while developing and modifying strategies to manage these trends.
All About You
- Proven track-record working with startups - well-versed in the AI, startup engagement and venture capital ecosystem
- Strong experience in cross-functional collaboration - driving alignment across product and commercial teams to drive outcomes
- Strong strategic prowess enabling swift distillation of fast-developing trends & analysis of the competitive landscape
- Strong project management experience - highly organized, meticulous attention to detail & experience executing multiple projects concurrently
- Comfortable in a fast-paced team environment
- MBA preferred; candidates may also qualify through an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact [email protected] and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.
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.
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.