Mastercard has officially unveiled its redesigned Dubai Experience Centre, bringing AI demonstrations, fintech collaboration, and payment technology workshops to 81 markets.
Located at the company’s regional headquarters in Dubai Internet City, the centre has been redesigned to help banks, merchants, fintechs, startups, and government stakeholders explore Mastercard’s technologies and develop solutions with its product teams.
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The unveiling coincides with Mastercard’s 40th anniversary in the UAE. The centre first opened in 2018 and has since hosted customer engagements, industry events, and strategic partnership announcements.
Inside the Redesigned Dubai Experience Centre
The redesigned centre is organised around three connected spaces, each supporting a different stage of customer engagement.
Discovery accommodates executive briefings and working sessions. Experience features immersive demonstrations of Mastercard technologies, allowing visitors to explore potential applications. Engagement provides dedicated collaboration rooms where businesses can work with Mastercard’s product teams on ideas and potential solutions.
The format is intended to move discussions beyond demonstrations towards evaluating technologies against specific business needs and developing practical applications.
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Driving AI and Fintech Innovation
Visitors can also explore AI use cases and initiatives emerging from Mastercard’s global Centre for AI and Advanced Technology in Dubai. The centre provides a setting for customers and partners to examine how technologies could be applied to payment services and wider business operations.
It also supports executive briefings, regional events, and Mastercard Academy programmes. For fintechs and merchants, access to demonstrations and collaborative sessions offers a way to understand potential applications before deciding how to incorporate them into their own products or services.
Expanding Education and Strategic Partnerships
Mastercard is also using the centre to engage universities and student delegations from regional and international institutions.
Activities include knowledge-sharing sessions and selected capstone research projects, with student internships planned from 2027. These engagements extend the centre’s role beyond commercial relationships to include education and talent development.
Mark Elliott, division president for East Arabia at Mastercard, said the redesigned space would bring the company’s technologies closer to the organisations shaping the future of commerce. He added that the center is intended to help partners explore ideas together and develop practical applications that support the UAE’s digital economy and the wider region.
Why it Matters to the MENA Fintech Ecosystem
For Mastercard, the centre creates a dedicated environment for engaging with organizations across a large and varied regional market. For fintechs, banks, and merchants, it offers a place to explore technologies and work directly with the company on potential use cases.
The broader opportunity is to shorten the distance between discovering a technology and determining how it could work in a real business environment. As the UAE continues to develop its digital economy, the center gives Mastercard a regional platform to connect payment infrastructure, emerging technologies, and industry collaboration across its EEMEA markets.
Engagement
