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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

Senior Counsel - Franchise, Global Affairs, Compliance and New Customer Types

Senior Counsel, Franchise, Global Affairs, Compliance and New Customer Types

Our Purpose
We work to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. We cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences enable us to be a better team – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation and delivers better business results.

Overview
• Franchise enables business growth and value-creating interactions through a dynamic platform which provides ongoing trust and confidence in the evolving payments and data driven ecosystem. Franchise is core to all Mastercard business: we enable our business by licensing our customers, registering third parties in the payments ecosystem, and creating, modifying, and enforcing standards that govern participation in the system. We also manage the integrity of our ecosystem by monitoring the activity of our customers through multiple performance programs.
• The Senior Counsel will provide support to the Global Lead Counsel, who has overall responsibility for providing legal expertise and guidance supporting the following Franchise business units which are based both in the center and across the Mastercard regions: Franchise Growth & Enablement; Franchise Innovation; Franchise Customer Engagement and Performance; Dispute Resolution Management, Franchise Architecture & Standards, and Franchise Services, as well as Global Affairs, Compliance and New Customer Types (primarily corporations, governments and merchants)
• The candidate will have the ability to think and act both strategically and tactically with respect to the needs of business clients and their objectives while ensuring that the corporation remains compliant with all applicable laws and regulations. The candidate must demonstrate sound business and legal judgment, thrive in a fast-paced environment, with a diverse workload, and have a proven track record of providing pragmatic and proactive legal advice.

Responsibilities
• Provide legal support for review of new Mastercard Standards (e.g. Standard Review Board items, bulletins, announcements, product/services mandates) and variance requests.
• Provide legal guidance with respect to additional use cases of Mastercard’s standards/requirements (e.g. rules interpretation/compliance, modifications to existing rules, creation of new rules, etc.).
• Understand the effects of regulation on our Franchise and how the rules have evolved to manage the effects while maintaining a globally interoperable system.
• Provide legal support for Franchise Service engagements.
• Support for the licensing/customer onboarding process and additional use cases.
• Provide legal support for customer non-compliance and enforcement issues.
• Provide legal support for Franchise Innovation engagements (e.g. open banking, CBDC/cryptocurrency/blockchain use cases.)
• Serving as the Franchise liaison in working with legal colleagues throughout the company (e.g. product, sales, regulatory, litigation, etc.).
• Draft and negotiate a wide range of contracts (including complex technology agreements, and licensing and service agreements) in furtherance of Mastercard’s products and solutions.
• Work with Franchise Regional Leads in providing guidance for defining standards, requirements and outcomes and ensure regional/global strategic alignment of new and existing rules and strategies to drive long-term business growth and preserve the value and integrity of Mastercard's brand.
• Partner across the organization to shape and launch innovative products and solutions globally that differentiate Mastercard and meet our customers’ and cardholders’ rapidly changing needs
• Provide some legal support to Global Affairs, Compliance and new customer types
• Other general support for Franchise Global Lead Counsel

All About You
• Law degree from a top-tier university
• Professional experience in general commercial legal matters in a reputable international law firm and/or as in-house lawyer for a multinational company, preferably in the financial services, banking or technology sector
• Must demonstrate strong leadership skills
• Must have a strategic mindset and be able to effectively discuss with and advise executive level management regarding complex legal matters and challenging situations
• Must be able to contribute and operate effectively within a diverse multicultural organization
• Should have a positive “can-do” attitude, be stress-resistant and ready to go the extra mile, and be willing to take initiative
• Should be team player who is both organizationally savvy and a strong communicator, and is able to collaborate cross-functionally and across regions
• Must be able to work independently
• Must be thorough, meticulous and detail-oriented, but nevertheless able to prioritize and focus on the most important matters rather than just the urgent ones
• Should exercise good commercial judgement, be solutions-oriented and have a creative approach to problem-solving
• Must be experienced with technology and have a strong interest in financial technology and information security issues, blockchain and artificial intelligence
• Must have experience demonstrating substantive knowledge of, and ability to navigate issues that touch on, multiple areas of law, such as technology, privacy, security, commercial/transactional, regulatory, and competition law
• Be able to think outside the box, and thrive in an environment where we expect the unexpected

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.