78% Of Indians Think They Can't Protect Their Data

Mastercard’s Bob Reany talks about innovations that will make digital transactions safer and frictionless.

- Salil Panchal & Naini Thaker

Multinational global payments and financial services firm Mastercard set up an innovation lab in Pune in 2017 to work on new commerce, payment and technology ideas. This followed a five-year investment of $1 billion towards India operations in 2014. Bob Reany, executive vice president, identity solutions, who has been with the New York-based company for 23 years, speaks to Forbes India about the road ahead. Edited excerpts from the interview:

Q What are some of the innovations your team is working on?

I want to remove some of the friction from consumer experiences. For instance, when you forget your password, or an OTP, and then dial a call centre to reset your password… all this is friction. We must understand that the whole password system was never developed for a scenario where a person has more than 200 accounts. So getting rid of passwords and these clunky messages is part of my focus.

A Mastercard cybersecurity survey in July 2018 showed that 78 percent of Indian consumers believe there is not much they can do to protect their personal and financial information from being stolen or compromised in a data breach. Nearly all Indians [91 percent] surveyed wished they knew more about how to protect their online information.