Ajay Banga has been nominated by the Biden, according to a press release from the White House.
Biden proclaimed: “Ajay is uniquely equipped to lead the World Bank at this critical moment in history. He has spent more than three decades building and managing successful, global companies that create jobs and bring investment to developing economies, and guiding organizations through periods of fundamental change. He has a proven track record managing people and systems, and partnering with global leaders around the world to deliver results.
He also has critical experience mobilizing public-private resources to tackle the most urgent challenges of our time, including climate change. Raised in India, Ajay has a unique perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing developing countries and how the World Bank can deliver on its ambitious agenda to reduce poverty and expand prosperity.”
Ajay Banga is the former CEO of Mastercard (2010-2020), and was CEO for Citigroup Asia Pacific less than a year before switching to Mastercard. He is also the son of a retired lieutenant-general of the Indian Army, as well as brother to Manvinder Singh Banga. The latter being the Chair of the UK Government Investments, non Executive Director for GlaxosmithKline, Marks & Spencer, and Thomson Reuters.
Photo Source: NDTV and Mastercard’s Twitter account
Ajay Banga, Cashless Society, and Crypto:
“The mistake that most people make is of assuming that MasterCard is a card company. We see ourselves as a payments company and have a presence in every form of cashless transaction,”
– Ajay Banga
Source: India Times
According to a report from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta titled “The 2020 Diary of
Consumer Payment Choice”, electronic payments comprised roughly 75% of all payments, and 33% of the entire value of transactions completed by American consumers for the month of October in 2020.
In countries such as India (where just 3% have credit cards) and Nigeria, the share of electronic transactions is much lower. Mastercard and Visa are actively cooperating with the governments to change that, and thereby tap into the lucrative fees derived from payment processing that Mastercard and Visa already enjoy in the United States and Europe. In 2017, New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) partnered with Mastercard in a “multi-platform campaign” called “Cashless Bano India”, “to create digital awareness and educate the masses about digital payment solutions for day to day transactions.” In 2013 Banja praised Nigeria’s Central Bank (NCB) during a Mastercard “Cashless Conversation” in Abuja, where he iterated the close cooperation between Mastercard and the Nigerian government: “MasterCard’s close collaboration with the CBN and other stakeholders in Nigeria has proved that collaboration between public and private sector organizations is the key to driving meaningful change in any economy”. The Mastercard CEO further proclaimed “The modernization of the payments industry, driven by local government, will positively impact economic growth in Nigeria by helping to eliminate inefficiency, corruption and fraud, which are issues faced by all cash-dependent economies.”
Also while Ajay was CEO, Mastercard organized “Cashless Conversations” in the United States, which listed representatives from The World Bank, The Fletcher School (Tufts University), Pro Mujer, and CGAP.
Banga was quoted in an India Times article, saying “The mistake that most people make is of assuming that MasterCard is a card company. We see ourselves as a payments company and have a presence in every form of cashless transaction“. Mastercard sees itself as a payment company, and will do what it can to encourage governments and consumers to give it access to the multitude of transactions whereby it can skim a profit from transaction fees.
Mastercard has also using biometrics as a tool for its “Cashless Society”. India’s Aadhaar, which is known as the world’s largest biometric ID system, has been integrated with Mastercard’s cashless payment system. In a 2010 Mastercard press release, the General Manager for South Asia, MasterCard Worldwide T.V. Seshadri stated: “MasterCard has been at the forefront of driving secure payment transactions in India and strongly believes the Aadhaar initiative will have a radical and transformative impact on the payments industry in India. It is indeed a decisive step for MasterCard towards achieving our national goal of displacing cash with electronic payments and opening up immense payment possibilities in India. MasterCard is confident that this state-of-the-art solution also brings safety, security, speed and efficiency in the evolving payment industry”.
There are quite a few detractors to the “Cashless Society” movement. Scott A. Shay, co-founder and chairman of Signature Bank, wrote a 2013 article on CNBC titled: “Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom” where he highlighted some counter-points to Banga’s rosy outlook.
In addition to cash, Mr. Banga has been outspoken against crypto: “I think cryptocurrency is junk….The idea of an anonymised currency produced by people who have to mine it, the value of which can fluctuate wildly – that to me is not the way that any medium of exchange deserves to be considered a medium of exchange,” Banga said during a 2018 ‘New India Lecture’ hosted by the Indian Consulate in New York City.
White House statement: click here
Ajay Banga’s biography at the World Economic Forum: click here
