Earlier this month, Mastercard announced that it has appointed Paul Stoddart as the new president of its New Payment Platform division. Stoddart will be replacing David Yates, who is slated to shift into a senior advisory role dedicated to exploring real-time national and cross-border payments strategies. Stoddart’s appointment is effective as of March 1, 2019.
In this new role, Stoddart will be tasked with leading the strategic development and integration of Mastercard’s emerging real-time payments capabilities outside of traditional card-based solutions. This will include Mastercard’s Vocalink account-based payments and its Homesend joint venture as well as Mastercard Send.
Stoddart is moving into this new role from his current position as CEO of Vocalink. He ascended to the top spot at Vocalink in 2017, when Mastercard acquired the company. Stoddart first joined Vocalink in 2012 as managing director, a role in which he was tasked with leading strategy and corporate development for the firm’s UK and international product portfolios.
Stoddart’s positions at Mastercard and Vocalink are the culmination of a 20-year career in corporate finance and development. Immediately prior to joining Vocalink, Stoddart was the head of origination and the co-head of corporate finance at Barclaycard, positions that he held for four years.
The recently-named New Payment Platform’s president had his first professional exposure to payments systems and strategies at RBS. At the Scottish bank, Stoddart has senior roles in retail direct and group corporate development as well as serving as the head of product and marketing for WorldPay prior to its acquisition by Vantiv.
He began his career at NatWest in the firm’s group corporate department. Stoddart received his BA with honors from Bangor University, where he studied finance, banking and insurance. He went on to get his MBA from GSM London in 2001.
In making the announcement regarding Stoddart’s new appointment, Mastercard’s chief product officer Michael Miebach took time to sing his praises: “Paul’s industry experience and deep immersion in the business makes him the ideal choice to drive the growth of our account-based payment activities. In his role as CEO of Vocalink, he has created momentum across the business, renewing relationships with key customers and expanding our infrastructure activities to new markets. We’ll now build on that foundation to deliver the technology and support needed for an expanded world of payments.”
