Catharina joined MasterCard in February 2007 and holds the position Vice president Global Merchant Development. She is heading up MasterCard’s global corporate program for merchant partners, where she is developing the global solutions and services for companies partnering with MasterCard across the world.

Prior to taking this role, Catharina was responsible for European Merchant Development, heading up a group responsible for developing new business with Pan European partners such as retailers, hotels and airlines. The group was developing payments solutions which enhances customer experience as well as generates cost savings and revenues to the partner (e.g. loyalty solutions, co-brand programs, cost optimization solutions.) In this context she has successfully developed partnerships with retailers like IKEA, the Ahold Group, Ferrari, H&M, Zara as well as airlines Swiss, Turkish and Austrian and SAS, Starwood and Accor hotel groups.

Before joining MasterCard, Catharina worked for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) where she held positions such as Vice president Commercial strategies, General Manager Belgium and Luxembourg and Director Product Development.

Her engagements ranged from general management, global market strategy development, brand positioning and product development for SAS and Star Alliance. In these roles Catharina built a strong knowledge base of developing customer segmentation and customer value propositions. She has led both B2B and B2C marketing and sales, bringing strategy into implementation on a global level. Catharina led multiple global consumer research and strategy projects for the Star Alliance group.

Catharina is also actively engaged in MasterCard’s partnership with the World Food Program. The World Food Program (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency active in solving hunger problems worldwide. It has a reach of 100 million people served and an average yearly budget of 4 billion USD. WFP was created in 1961 and is part of the United Nations. MasterCard and WFP are developing Digital Food (i.e. more market based solutions which will leverage new payment tools.)

Catharina Eklöf holds a MBA from Uppsala University in Sweden.