Mastercard has named Yasemin Bedir President of its Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region, effective 1 September. The UAE-based role comes with a seat on the company’s Management Committee.
She replaces Dimitrios Dosis, now Chief Commercial Payments Officer for Commercial & New Payment Flows. EEMEA has grown through recent market additions and now covers 81 countries.
Bedir will own strategy and performance across the region, working through Mastercard’s partnerships with retailers, fintechs, financial institutions, governments and businesses.
“Yasemin is a leader who finds the best in her teams to help them deliver the greatest impact for our customers and to fuel local economies,” said Sachin Mehra, Chief Business Officer, Mastercard. “This is a vast and complex region that demands creative thinking, proven results and strong relationships. Yasemin has delivered that throughout her career. Working with our customers and partners across the EEMEA region, we have a true opportunity to shape and redefine how people and businesses move money, exchange value and enable commerce for years to come.”
For the past four years she ran Eastern Europe as Division President, holding the business together through a punishing geopolitical and regulatory stretch and strengthening Mastercard’s position across those markets. Talent development has been a consistent theme of her leadership, alongside a culture built on accountability and collaboration.
Bedir joined Mastercard in 2007. She has since worked across several global markets, serving as General Manager for Turkey and Azerbaijan and spending close to five years on community institution and processor relationships in North America.
“I’ve been inspired by the teams here at Mastercard,” said Bedir. “Their resilience, innovative spirit and relentless dedication to meet and exceed customer needs is what powers our impact every day. Together, we will build on the strong foundation the regional team has created under Dimi’s leadership over the past five years.”
Her earlier career took in HSBC, Garanti Bank and Yapı Kredi in Turkey. She co-founded the Professional Women Network and runs several initiatives supporting SME growth.
The Herald View
Bedir inherits the one Mastercard region where the growth story and the political risk sit in the same markets. Eighty-one countries, sanctions exposure in the east, Gulf central banks building sovereign schemes, and African mobile-money incumbents that no card network outspends. A parachuted-in external hire would have burned two years learning which conversations are commercial and which only look it. Twenty years inside the company and a Turkish banking grounding buy that time back. The measure is not headline volume growth but whether Mastercard holds share in the Gulf once domestic rails go live.