Christina Sommer
Vice President, Global Insights
Christina Sommer is a Vice President in the Global Insights group of MasterCard Worldwide.
She has 14 years of experience in the financial services industry, specializing in retail banking and payments strategy. Her current responsibilities involve applying market, consumer, and financial insights to improve business results for MasterCard and its customers globally.
The lingering economic situation in the United States has taken its toll on US consumers in several ways–lost jobs, lower wages, shaken confidence and less access to traditional banking products. The last-named is perhaps a lesser known consequence here in the US, but one that is worth further exploring. Last week, the FDIC released the
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At a cocktail party recently, I was talking to a handful of people about how much we rely on mobile phones to run our daily lives. Naturally, given what I do for a living, I threw out a comment about how I cannot wait until we can actually use our phones to pay for our
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India is a market that has always fascinated me—so large, so diverse, so educated, and yet so un-banked. According to the World Bank, only 35 percent of Indians have an account with a financial institution. At first I attributed this to the income disparities that exist within India. Recently, I was reviewing the results of
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With mobile payments on the horizon and much media coverage in recent weeks about new product launches (e.g., PayPass Wallet Services), a logical question emerges: Why would consumers choose to adopt this new technology? The reasons for adoption—as well as its timing—vary widely by market. There are, however, some common themes. In completing the analysis
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Over the last eight months or so, our team has been heads down working on a new and exciting project—the MasterCard Mobile Payments Readiness Index—to be launched next month. While we are not ready to share all of the findings yet, one of the headlines is mobile commerce (m-commerce) is the payment type consumers are
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The new up-and-coming emerging economies are the CIVETS: Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa, according to Robert Ward, global forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit. According to Mr. Ward, they are ready to become the next BRICs. Unless you have been living under a brick yourself for the last 10 years, you’ve
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As we end the year and begin a new one, many lists of top trends surface – recapping the past and forecasting the future. I have to admit that I take pleasure in reading these and am always drawn to a good top 10 list. Last week on www.CNN.com several lists caught my eye, mainly
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