MasterCard Feels The Heat

MasterCard International is feeling the heat from Internet companies developing alternative online payment methods. In the keynote address at Faulkner & Gray's Credit Card Forum XII in Miami, President and CEO Robert W. Selander said that the association's card issuers must find their own alternate payment programs for "the huge number of people surfing the Internet who don't qualify for traditional payment cards" as a target market the association and issuers have to serve. "These customers include not only less-credit-worthy individuals, but also teenagers and students for whom traditional cards may not be appropriate," he said. "Today there is the whole group of third parties trying to figure out ways to enable these new types of Internet-savvy customers to buy electronically."