3.13. MasterCard makes its tools available to all of its member banks. [STEI02b] states that these tools are more likely to be attractive to state and regional banks. Big national and international banks are likely to have developed and use their own analytical tools. Discuss the implications of this in terms of the marketing of MasterCard’s IT services. Include in your discussion a consideration of what MasterCard can offer the big banks.

An example of a client/server architecture is that used by MasterCard International [HIGG03, STEI02b].The company’s computer facility authorizes, clears, and settles each credit card transaction in real time as a cardholder’s credit card is swiped.The client/server system ties together 25,000 member banks with MasterCard’s massive data warehouse, which helps the credit card giant and its bank clients make more effective business decisions. MasterCard has converted the 50 terabytes (TB)1 of transactional and financial data into a business-intelligence engine for use by banks and MasterCard employees.
Planning for the data warehouse began in the mid-1990s. Interestingly, the IT (information technology) staff did not feel the need to present a detailed business case to upper management for this major project. Rather, the data warehouse was presented as a strategic move to give MasterCard a competitive edge. Specifically, MasterCard wanted to improve market share. At the time, MasterCard accounted for only about 25% of charges for goods sold worldwide using credit cards, with Visa accounting for 50%.Today, that market share is closer to one-third and growing.
Financial institutions that use MasterCard rely on the history of credit card