Dublin City Council (DCC) and Mastercard have formed a three-year innovation partnership to aid in Dublin city planning as part of its Smart Dublin program. Mastercard will develop its SpendingPulse reports – retail spending data – to be released as part of the the Quarterly Economic Monitor – a joint initiative on behalf of the four Dublin local authorities to track developments in the capital’s economy. The transaction data, will be aggregated and analyzed to aid in fostering new insights on the spending patterns of its citizens and tourists.
“Dublin is leading the way in harnessing the power of big data to help run the city more efficiently, advance tourism, and to better understand the economic trends and behaviour of its residents and visitors,” said Jason Lalor, country manager at Mastercard Ireland. “Mastercard is delighted to bring our expertise and innovation capacity to help the city use our data to plan better economic policies and interventions that will improve its overall economic performance.”
MasterCard Labs Dublin has been instrumental in the research and development new payment methods – such as Okr, an API that enables users to pay with their smart phones by linking them to their card details.
DCC Chief Executive Owen Keegan stated: “This unique partnership with Mastercard will allow Dublin [to] develop up-to-date insights on its economic performance at a time when we face a number of external threats such as Brexit. This is a great example of private sector data being used for smarter purposes and supporting future city planning. We look forward to also exploring new cashless innovations in Dublin while also engaging with the local start-up ecosystem in this process.”
