How Mastercard Builds Innovation That Actually Ships, with Maja Lapcevic, Senior Vice President, Martech, Innovation and Commercialization

What does real corporate innovation look like inside a global financial services giant?

In this episode of Beyond the Core, we sit down with Maja Lapcevic, Senior Vice President, Martech, Innovation and Commercialization at Mastercard, and formerly led innovation management and helped architectthe Mastercard Foundry—a world-class innovation engine that actually ships and scales new ventures.

We cover:

• Why speed starts in the back office—and how Mastercard shrank pilot timelines

• How they measure and kill “zombie projects” with ruthless clarity

• The tools they use to track materiality, velocity, and quality across their portfolio

• Why co-development with business units (not innovation theater) drives commercial wins

• What startups really want from corporate partners—and how Mastercard protects customer trust

• How to earn internal credibility by helping business units win fast

• Their $50M+ benchmark for new growth bets—and how they test before they build

If you’re navigating innovation inside a large organization, or partnering with one, this episode is packed with tactical lessons.

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📍 Timestamps

00:00 – Intro & Maja’s current role at Mastercard

02:00 – How Mastercard balances brand + product innovation

03:50 – Working with startups through Start Path

06:00 – What agentic commerce means (and why it matters)

09:10 – How Mastercard measures pilots—and kills zombie projects

13:00 – Mastercard’s innovation structure: why it works

16:00 – The Horizon 3 fund and what it’s designed to do

22:30 – What startups ask for most: data or distribution?

28:00 – Advice for startup founders pitching big corporates

30:00 – The $50M test: how Mastercard validates growth bets

34:50 – A favorite project: Mastercard Move Commercial Payments for B2B payments

39:00 – Building trust with business units

43:00 – Why internal alignment beats siloed innovation

48:00 – Maja’s hot take on innovation theater—and what’s changed