MasterCard International was present at the founding of EMV and remained a central partner through the standard’s development, deployment, and evolution. Philip’s relationship with MasterCard runs across three decades and two distinct chapters of his career: the EMV years at Europay, and the FIDO years at the Alliance.
At Europay, MasterCard was one of the three organisations that met in that first-floor conference room at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in November 1993. In the early stages of EMV development, MasterCard largely left the technical heavy lifting to Philip’s team at Europay until Andy Tarbox came on board to carry their side of the specification. Together, the teams built the standard that now sits in more than ten billion cards worldwide.
At the FIDO Alliance, MasterCard held a board seat alongside Philip’s from 2014 to 2017. The governance table included Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Samsung, MasterCard, and Visa — the organisations that would ultimately deploy passkeys at global scale. MasterCard’s presence on the FIDO board reflected the same recognition that had driven the EMV collaboration twenty years earlier: authentication and payments are not separate problems. They are the same problem, solved at different layers.
PA&A also engaged directly with MasterCard International on EMV standards development and adoption strategy — advising on the deployment roadmap as the standard moved from specification into the market.
The Work
EMV standards development and adoption strategy — as one of the three founding organisations, MasterCard was a partner in the technical and political work of building the standard that Philip helped name and architect.
FIDO Alliance Board — MasterCard sat on the FIDO Board of Directors during Philip’s term as Secretary (2014–2017), working alongside the organisations that would deploy FIDO’s specifications as passkeys across the global payments and technology infrastructure.
EMV → · FIDO → · Payments → · PA&A → · Client Projects →